0^ »•■•♦ *0. 






/v. 



»♦ ^0 



^^^^. 









^ *©»o« -^ 



Ay .♦J^i^*^ '*' - . V . > 






o,*»it;-'.o^ **.'*;?^ 



*..i:L'. 



> .^ :m^', \/ .*^^", \/ rm^'-^ *. 









/ .♦^"^. • 



6^' 









^^^^'-^.. - 



^ ^j^. ^ 






? .^^°- 



• o > 






























'8> 






0" .^*S»i^'. v> ,J* »> 




** .^y«iPN*. ^■^. ,*^ 'Jv^j* .', -ft* ,** y^itm^'. '^*. 



>o* .•••.. ""oJ 




> 'V^^^'o^ V^^*>'' V*^''*/! 






:. -^-.Z /^ 






"-^^■^^ 














" • • • .-v* 



4,0- . v- • . ^> . 






^_ •• 







WOODROW WILSON 
AND THE WORLD'S PEACE 



BY GEORGE D. HERRON 

THE MENACE OF PEACE 



WOODROW WILSON 

AND 

THE WORLD'S PEACE 



BY 

GEORGE D. HERRON 




NEW YORK 

MITCHELL KENNERLEY 

1917 



COPYRIGHT 19 1 7 BY 
MITCHELL KENNERLEY 



i^n 



PRINTED IN AMERICA 



EXPLANATION AND DEDICATION 

EXCEPTING the first, these chapters 
were written for Continental European 
readers ; I have indicated, on the title-page pre- 
ceding each paper, the time and the occasion of 
its publication, and the journal wherein it first 
appeared. I do not now gather them into this 
little book because I imagine them to be an im- 
portant or permanent contribution to the sub- 
ject of the war, or of the peace that shall finally 
ensue. I bring them together in the hope that 
they may have a passing and inspirational 
value to such as think and feel profoundly 
about the meaning of these days, and who see, 
or seem to see, that the world's political and 
social redemption is the possible, even prob- 
able, ultimation of the war. 

Each paper has had two or more translations 
into other languages, other countries, than 



VI EXPLANATION AND DEDICATION 

that in which it was originally published. The 
opening paper, which gives the book its name 
and which was first printed in The New Age 
of London, has since been put into German for 
Die Freie Zeitung of Bern — the organ of the 
earnest and able German intellectuals who are 
working for a new and democratic Germany, 
and who include among their number such men 
as Professor Foerster, Dr. Schlieben, and the 
author of "J'Accuse." Monsieur Paul Des- 
jardins, co-operating with the French Minis- 
ter of Public Instruction, has honored the con- 
eluding paper, "Pro- America," by publishing 
it as a preface to a classic edition of President 
Wilson's message of April 2. 

Chronologically, the opening paper should 
have come third in the book. I have placed it 
first because it seems to me to afford, more 
fully than the papers which follow it, a per- 
spective of the President's prodigious purpose. 
The five succeeding papers are offered in the 
order in which they appeared. 

To connect them a little more closely, I have 



EXPLANATION AND DEDICATION VU 

somewhat developed the papers since their 
publication in the reviews and journals indi- 
cated; but, in the main, they stand substanti- 
ally as originally written. I have not tried to 
eliminate the minor repetitions which are in- 
evitable when one is presenting the same gen- 
eral subject under different phases and to dif- 
ferent peoples. Nor have I thought best to 
modify their form or appeal, even though they 
necessarily must prove retrospective, in some 
of their aspects, in the light of subsequent 
events and decisions. I think such American 
readers as I may have will prefer that my 
words retain their first impulse and order. 

Monsieur Louis Ferriere, Geneva's beloved 
and consecrated citizen, and long a pastor of 
her National Church, has graciously consented 
to accept the dedication of these pages. He 
has blessed me with his friendship since the 
days when I was a student in his city ; and it is 
due to my fellowship with him, and to the spir- 
itual compulsion I have received from that 
fellowship, that such halting powers as I have 



Vlll EXPLANATION AND DEDICATION 

are all mobilized in the service of the Cause 
which this book so dis jointly and inadequately 
advocates. 

George D. Hereon. 

Le Retour, 
26 Chemin des Cottages, 
Geneva. Switzerland. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I WooDRow Wilson and the World's Peace 3 

II The Man and the President 49 

III His Initial Effort 81 

IV The Pro-German Morality op the Pacifist 99 
V Pro-America 135 

VI Appendix: An Apologia 155 



WOODROW WILSON 

AND THE 

WORLD'S PEACE 

First published in London, the New Age, June T, IQIT, 

as an interpretation of President Wilson s address 

to the American Senate, January 2y. 



WOODROW WILSON 

AND THE 

WORLD'S PEACE 



ALREADY, spoken as they were on the 
22nd of January, the words of Wood- 
row Wilson concerning the world's future 
peace seem remotely in the past — so swift, so 
unpredictable, so immeasurable and amazing, 
are the strides of history in these tremendous 
days. Yet it is not too late — it is rather too 
early — to consider the interrogation, as unes- 
capable as it is momentous, which these words 
upstand athwart the human climb. They 
were addressed to the American Senate; but 
that body was merely the necessary medium of 
a message intended for the ears of all the earth. 
Not many have barkened to the message in its 



4 WOODROW WILSON 

entirety ; fewer still have laid hold of its mean- 
ing. It remains yet to be rightly read, and it 
will be pertinent so Jong as the ancient yet 
perennial predicament of the world continues. 
So long as our national egoisms prevail; so 
long as diplomacy flounders amidst predacious 
follies and futilities ; so long as political power 
pursues its belief in material might and re- 
mains skeptic and cynic towards the justice of 
love and its liberating correlatives; — just so 
long will the summons of the American Presi- 
dent stand across the course of the nations, de- 
manding an answer that shall accord with the 
mind of God as it was revealed in Christ, and 
weighted with judgment and doom if the an- 
swer be not faithfully forthcoming. 

Not that I wish to overstate Mr. Wilson's 
seership and statesmanship. There were errors 
of judgment in his earlier deahngs with Ger- 
many. In the pursuit of his American pro- 
gram, he has more than once had to retrace his 
way and start anew — and who among the pio- 
neers has not had to feel and to plot his path 



AND THE world's PEACE 5 

through inevitable mistakes and misgivings? 
But whatever his retraeements or turnings, he 
has proceeded with a spiritual discernment and 
audacity which have no political parallel. And 
by his address to the Senate — whereby he has 
undertaken to assemble the nations unto the 
Sermon on the Mount — he has challenged 
them to a mutual adventure that would, if suc- 
cessful, release the pent soul of the world at 
last, and change the competitive struggle and 
sorrow into co-operate creation and joy. 

There are mockers, of course, enough and 
to spare. To speak of the brotherhood of na- 
tions as the solvent of the problems of the pres- 
ent war is to invite the distrust if not the de- 
rision of both political and academic intellects. 
Our institutional ongoings are still grooved in 
the notion that principles and actions which are 
individually desirable are collectively wild and 
unworkable. The centers of authority, when 
you examine their procedure honestly, are 
found pursuing the efficiencies which all re- 
ligions alike attribute to diabolic agency: in 



6 WOODROW WILSON 

the mortal efficiency of the Power we variously 
call God, in the literal applicability or prac- 
ticability of the Messianic programs, authority 
has neither a jot nor a tittle of faith. And the 
peoples whom authority perverts and exploits 
■ — these have had so little experience in interna- 
tional truth or trust or fidelity, so little experi- 
ence in fraternity and freedom within the na- 
tional frontiers, that to them a world that shall 
be everywhere accordant and kindly seems pos- 
sible only in the dreams of the dreamers. 

It is true that the unrealizable woe of the 
hour — that man's total history indeed — is the 
repudiation of this dualistic devilry. And 
anointed teachers have taught us, again and 
again, that life is not divided ; that whatever is 
law anywhere, whatever is good or true any- 
where, is righteous and truth and law every- 
where. We also discern, in rare moments of 
moral lucidity, the planetary failure of ma- 
terial might dissevered from spiritual compul- 
sion and pity; it has always been treacherous 
and incompetent, leading the race from abyss 



AND THE WORLD S PEACE 7 

to abyss — from the ruin of Egypt and Israel 
to the ruin of Athens and Rome ; from the dark 
and the terror of medieval Europe to the whole 
unintelligible horror of the Europe of today. 
But the lessons of history seem largely un- 
learned. The shepherds still huddle the sheep 
— their own impoverished souls also — in the 
old barren pastures, the out-worn folds. 
Statesmanship seems well-nigh extinct, and 
the prophets lived long ago. Policies and 
plottings survive that are little else, in their 
essence, than the devil-worship of primitive 
man. For it is fear not faith that bounds our 
national horizons — or rather it is fear of the 
good and faith in the evil. The conception 
that power belongs to material and unmoral 
might; the notion that an ideal good affords 
neither order nor competency — it is this that 
is basic in politics and commerce, shaping na- 
tional ambitions and social constitutions; it is 
this that has been the law of economic expan- 
sion and international relations. And the Eu- 
rope of today is the result of this law's long and 
depraving sovereignty. 



II 

BUT it is to deliver the nations from this 
diabolic dualism that Woodrow Wilson 
has come. By his address to the Senate, he 
hath summoned the world to political and in- 
dustrial repentance. He calls not only Ger- 
many and Europe, but America and Asia and 
the ultimate islands, to a matchless experiment 
in the eiBciency of the good. He proceeds 
upon the expectation that he will find in the 
earth a faith that shall be equal to this experi- 
ment. 

And according to its faith will it be with 
the world, at last. We shall nationally and in- 
ternationally be what we believe we can be. 
If we believe in the best, we shall become and 
achieve the best. If we believe only a frag- 
mentary good is attainable, we shall have but 
the fragments our little belief apprehends. If 



AND THE world's PEACE 9 

we believe in the sole efficiency of the worst, 
even worse than the worst we shall have. The 
world as a whole, is always the expression of 
its common belief or unbelief about itself — 
just as each individual, in the end, becomes the 
living record of his innermost and perhaps un- 
recognized thought of life. 

Faith indeed has not to do with something 
vague or invisible or unrealizable. Faith is 
life's fundamental heroism, the mode of God's 
being, the method whereby the universe be- 
comes, and is always creating according to its 
image. As the faith of man has invented the 
steam-engine and the telegraph, or has sounded 
its high notes in Isaiah or Socrates, in Jeanne 
d'Arc or Mazzini, so the faith of God has ut- 
tered the stars and dared the more perilous ex- 
periment of man. Faith is always the reac- 
tion upon self of the man, of society, of the 
atom, of the universal whole. Thus what we 
believe or disbelieve is stupendously, infinitely 
important Our faith that the highest is prac- 
ticable is the very force that makes it prac- 



10 WOODROW WILSON 

ticable; and our unbelief in the practicability 
of the ideal is the precise preventative of its 
realization. 

Woodrow Wilson has dared to believe di- 
vinely; and his faith that a federate world is 
possible^ and the challenge of that faith to the 
nations, is the most creative collective act since 
the French Revolution, By his faith he has set 
a goal from which mankind can never take its 
eyes; he has sent forth the word that can never 
return. If the continuation of man upon the 
earth is inevitable, the final fulfillment of this 
word is inevitable. By the projection of one 
man's faith, humanity has been made to turn an 
unexpected corner, and there to depart irrevoc- 
ably from the paths of its past ongoing. The 
horizon of history had highly shifted, the whole 
prospect of mankind had resplendently 
changed, and the rostrum of the American:. 
Senate had become as God's burning altar, 
when, the address of the President concluded, 
the reverent wonder of the hour went abroad, 
encircling the world as a divine visitation^ 



Ill 

T)UT turning now to the address, let us 
-■^ first consider its effect upon international 
procedure. By his declaration of the rights of 
nations — even more pivotal and immortal than 
the doctrine of individual rights which motived 
the French Revolution — Mr. Wilson has laid 
beneath the international idea its first substan- 
tial and truthful foundation. For a true in- 
ternationalism can exist only as the shepherd 
of virile and determined nationalisms. Until 
now, the internationalism of propagandas 
which have claimed such distinction has been 
but a doctrinal fiction, a pretentious and sterile 
abstraction. It has always been an interna- 
tionalism based upon a fatuous and fatal denial 
of nationality. 

One of the several causes of the Socialist 

debacle, at the beginning of the war, was this 

11 



12 WOODROW WILSON 

inhuman and unimaginative confusion of anti- 
nationalism with m/^r-nationalism — ^this mis- 
taking the former for the latter. The Social- 
ist movement has never been m^^rnational : it 
has been only anti-nsitionsil. The notion that 
national entities are unreal, that the nation is 
an arbitrary economic creation, is not interna- 
tionalism: it is the exact negation of all that 
gives internationalism its name or reason for 
being. 

For the nation does eooist; and it is probably 
as permanent as the world itself. None of the 
nations of old are wholly dead: the most an- 
cient and forgotten peoples have their living 
national remnants upon the earth. And it is 
upon the recognition of each particular ethni- 
cal variety, it is through calhng each group 
unto the fulfillment of its being, that an in- 
telligent and compelling internationalism will 
manifest itself. It will rise, this true inter- 
nationalism, not from the obliteration of na- 
tional lines, but from their vivid and fraternal 
definition. Its mission will be, first, to pro- 



AND THE world's PEACE 13 

cure for each people, however small, an ade- 
quate opportunity for self -discovery and self- 
affirmation, and then to coordinate all peoples 
in one resolute and irradiant progress, one sat- 
isfied universal family. 

It is this our President has proposed ; and I 
believe that the future — perhaps ransomed 
from our terrible present by his initiative — 
will hold Woodrow Wilson to have been the 
world's first international statesman. There 
is already forming, as a result of his insist- 
ence, and for the first time in history, a body 
of international public opinion. There is al- 
ready building, out of the spiritual materials 
his hands have furnished, the foundations 
whereupon a world-citizenry may rise and in- 
form itself and take its decisions. If the plan 
he proposed before the American Senate is 
followed, it will result in the end of both war 
and imperialism, and finally issue in a world- 
republic. 



IV 

BUT the immediate and fundamental de- 
mand of the President is this: that the 
states of Europe are asked to reorganize them- 
selves on the basis of government by the con- 
sent of the governed. No longer must it be 
that the right of the smallest people to its own 
free and unhindered being, to its own special 
unfoldment and contribution, shall be subor- 
dinated, in thought or in fact, to mere might 
and size — to any imperial purpose or interest. 
The brutish and commercial state, the mate- 
rialistic fetish of dominion, must give place to 
the knowledge of the nation as an inviolable 
spiritual being. 

Other propositions are laid down, it is true; 
but they are based upon the principle I have 
stated; and it is this principle which I shall 
particularly discuss. I need not refer to the 

14 



AND THE world's PEACE 15 

*'peace without victory" which the pacifists 
have placed upon their banners, and which 
pan-German apostles have adopted as a mask 
for their Middle-Europe program. It is pos- 
sible that the exploited phrase was meant espe- 
cially for Germany rather than for the Allies, 
even though it is Germany and the pacifists 
who have pressed it into their service. It may 
well have been intended as an answer to Ger- 
many's request for a negotiated peace; for 
this request was based upon an impudent as- 
sumption of victory — ^which victory the Allies 
were bidden to take knowledge of and to make 
terms with. 

A similar misconception may have attended 
the emphasis which was laid upon the freedom 
of the seas. This emphasis has also been mo- 
bilized by Germany, and thus presented as a 
protest against British navalism. It is likely 
that something else was in the President's 
mind. He probably was thinking of the ac- 
cess of Russia and Roumania, and of the 
smaller nations of Europe, to the open seas 



16 WOODROW WILSON 

and their highways; and this, not navalism, 
was the import of his emphasis. If the right 
of each people to its own political and economic 
development is granted, the necessity that each 
have a door upon the seas must also be ac- 
knowledged and fulfilled. But, as I say, this 
and all other concerns of the address are cor- 
relates of the fundamental principle of self- 
government. 



V 

LET us see what this principle, so quietly- 
stated, would mean if accepted by the 
belligerents. Its first result would be the rel- 
egation of the present map of the greater part 
of Europe to the waste-basket; and with it 
would go most of existing European govern- 
ments. There would be a complete geo- 
graphical redistribution in all the countries 
East of the Rhine and the Adriatic, and each 
would follow Russia in a profound political 
and social revolution. Two ancient empires 
would go out of existence; several new states 
would come into being. Forgotten folk-cul- 
tures, beautiful and abundant, would revive 
and grow and gladden the heart of the world. 
Many varieties of industrial concentration and 
individualization, many new special political 

forms and social experiments, would be given 

17 



18 WOODROW WILSON 

free place and encouragement. Old and sup- 
pressed literatures, splendid but buried 
civilizations, would rise in a common and re- 
joicing resurrection. Compared with what it 
now is, Europe would become a different and 
well-nigh Edenic continent. 



VI 

T) UT before generalizing further, let us be- 
-*^ gin at the Rhine, there applying the self- 
governing principle to Germany. First of 
all, of course, Alsace-Lorraine must be given 
back to France — for such is the ardent desire 
of that subject and unhappy province — and 
much of Prussia must become part of reunited 
Poland. But the geographical and ethnical 
problem is only preliminary. It is after the 
Alsatians and the Poles have been joined to 
their own, it is after the Germans have been 
confined within their rightful frontiers, that 
the real problem of Germany begins — that is, 
if the principle which Mr. Wilson proposed is 
adopted as the basis of peace. The German 
Empire itself must go back into the melting- 
pot, and the German peoples be invited to de- 
cide upon the forms and methods by which they 

19 



20 WOODROW WILSON 

shall govern themselves. For, be it remem- 
bered, Germany is not a self-governing coun- 
try; nor the Germans, in any real sense, a po- 
litical people. They did not have a political 
origin; they have had no essential political ex- 
perience ; and their Empire is not a political but 
a military state. The German Empire, im- 
posed upon the German peoples by Prussian 
arms, is now maintained as an organization for 
universal Germanic industrial and cultural do- 
minion. The only part the German peoples 
have had in the construction of their Empire is 
that of docile acceptance. They had, intel- 
lectually and politically, nothing to do with the 
making of it, and they have nothing to do with 
the actual governing of it. Unlike France 
and England, which have a thousand years of 
political evolution behind them, the course of 
German history has been run under pressure 
from the top — has been guided by princes, 
often grotesque as well as brutish and ty- 
rannical, whom the peoples have obeyed with 
little or no resentment or self-affirmation. 



AND THE world's PEACE 21 

Political Germany, non-existent till now, must 
come into being and receive its primary les- 
sons: the German peoples must teach them- 
selves the alphabet of self-government. They 
will have to begin, if they are to be a political 
nation, with the rudiments which the English 
makers of the Magna Charta^ wrested from 
King John, or with the impulse by which the 
Revolution prevailed in France. 

Some of the German leaders have been 
quick to discern this : they have seen that a first 
result of Mr. Wilson's address, if appHed in 
principle, would be the dismemberment of 
Prussia and the fundamental reconstruction 
of German nationality. They confess, too, 
that a psychological revolution must also fol- 
low; for the national mentations of the Ger- 
man are as tribal now, and his collective mor- 
ality is as certainly barbaric, as in the days of 
Tacitus. 



VII 

PASSING southward with the self-gov- 
erning principle, we find the Austrian 
and Turkish Empires coming to their overdue 
end. Bohemia becomes a delivered and inde- 
pendent nation. The dismembered Serbs are 
united in one national family, according to 
their centuried yearnings and struggles. 
Three million Roumanians are released from 
the malific Magyar oppression and gathered 
into the fold of their own people. The Aus- 
trian Poles, as well as the rest of the Slavs, are 
joined unto their kindred. Of the Austrian 
Empire, some six or seven million Austrians 
are left, with a like number of Hungarians, to 
go on together or separately, according as they 
mutually decide. 

Russia has already renounced her traditional 
governmental modes. Nationality must be re- 

22 



AND THE world's PEACE 23 

stored to the Fins; Russian Poland must be 
surrendered; the Letts, the Lithuanians, the 
Ukrainians, and all the diverse peoples under 
former Russian rule, even unto far and fair 
Bokhara, must each be bidden to the festal 
board of the Great Freedom — must each be 
released and resourced to pursue its own in- 
digenous cultural system. And for her own 
immediate people, for those who are primarily 
Muscovite or Russian, must Russia provide 
the forms of a just and democratic political 
procedure. 

Nor must the Turk be only expelled from 
Europe, and securely sequestered in some cor- 
ner of Asia Minor : not this is enough, nor the 
partition of his territories enough. The dis- 
persed Armenians must be summoned to their 
high and ancient habitation, and there be en- 
abled to re-integrate their once vigorous and 
valorous nationality. And from Persia must 
England as well as Russia take predatory 
hands; for the Persia of today is replete with 
political and spiritual potencies that ask for 



24i WOODROW WILSON 

naught but opportunity. Egypt must be 
trained to self-government also, even if re- 
maining a member of the British Empire. 
Then the Arab — he who built resplendent 
Bagdad and the divine Alhambra, who gave 
mathematics and medicine and philosophy to 
Europe, and whose marvellous cities the Turk 
and the Tartar and the Mongol destroyed — he, 
too, must be invited to make his pecuhar and 
bounteous contribution to the more beneficient 
world. Nor let us forget, even along the 
coasts of Asia Minor, to call the Greeks to- 
gether under a government of their choice, with 
no alien prince imposed upon them by the dy- 
nasts. The Syrians also must have the desire 
of their hearts — the re-establishment of the 
kingdom of the French Crusaders. And then 
may Israel return to Jerusalem, and the lands 
of the Jordan blossom according to the words 
of their ancient prophets. 

Nor these wonders only: if there should be 
a common and sincere acceptance of the pro- 



AND THE world's PEACE 25 

gram of President Wilson, other and many re- 
demptions would ensue, making the world at 
last the harmonious home of an adequate race. 



VIII 

IT might well be that the extension and 
adaptation of the Swiss governmental sys- 
tem to the ethnic groups of Eastern Europe 
would be the wisest solution of the racial in- 
terests that now seem so conflicting. These 
conflicts of interests are superficial and unreal : 
it is the unity and mutuality of interests that 
is real. Nothing can be disadvantageous to 
one people without being harmful to all peo- 
ples: nothing can be truly good for one with- 
out that good accruing to all. It is in the 
unity and orchestration of interests that the 
well-being of the peoples lies; for, at bottom, 
there is only one all-embracing good, one in- 
clusive and pervasive common health. 

The Swiss Confederation is the convincing 
demonstration that divergent races and re- 
ligions may find a common and beloved na- 

26 



AND THE world's PEACE 27 

tional home. I am prone to think of Switzer- 
land as the microcosm of the Europe of the 
future — the microcosm, perhaps, of the world- 
republic. Switzerland is indeed, not to me 
only, but to wiser dreamers than myself, the 
fore-type of the federate humanity. Of 
course, democracy has yet farther to go: 
Switzerland has by no means reached the 
democratic goal. But she is in the path that 
leads thereto; and if the eyes of the peace- 
makers be fixed upon the peace that is per- 
manent and pure, in some such path as the 
Swiss Cantons have taken will they start the 
smaller states and national remnants of East- 
ern Europe. 

Three federal groups might thus be formed: 
the first consisting of Poland united with Lith- 
uania, the Letts and other suppressed and 
unhappy Slavic peoples. Then the contend- 
ing members of the present Austrian Empire, 
ransomed and cleansed from centuries of 
Hapsburg dominion, might co-operate in a 
greater Switzerland, nor thence desire sepa- 



28 WOODROW WILSON 

rate political existence. The Balkan Con- 
federation — betrayed by the charlatanic Co- 
burg Judas — ^might again be reconstituted. 
And once the process were prehended, once 
the peoples were permitted to discover them- 
selves in each other, it would be a marvellous 
and manful Europe which would thence fulfill 
the pattern received from the Alps. 



IX 

THE Allies have been fighting for noth- 
ing else than this — for nothing else than 
a peace that shall, in faith and in fact, com- 
pletely accord with the President's funda- 
mental proposition. It is no secret that Eng- 
land is struggling, even during the war, to give 
a true and final home-rule to Ireland: she only 
waits for the Irish to agree among themselves. 
Nor is it any secret that she is planning for 
India what the Hindoos have never been able 
to achieve for themselves — a unified and co- 
herent national being. Again and again, and 
sincerely I beheve, have France and England 
pledged themselves to the principle of self- 
governing nationalities, and thence to the en- 
actment of one public law, one increasing com- 
mon justice, throughout the world. 

Nor is the German adoption of the demo- 



30 WOODEOW WILSON 

cratic program impossible. It is indeed the 
most probable final result of a German defeat. 
.^'"^o one proposes or desires the German peo- 
1 pies should be crushed; it is only desired that 
they be redeemed from their own Prussian 
methods and masters. I am not among those 
who despair, I am rather among those who 
hope, that the victory of the Allies will result, 
not only in the dispersion of the Prussian night 
from the German mind, but in a new and spir- 
itualized Germany — a Germany in which all 
the sheer might, the occult material discern- 
ment, which has gone into Prussian dominion 
shall be transmuted into the forces of spiritual 
and democratic development. A repentant 
Germany, divinely restored and commissioned 
by a great common impulse from within, is 
precisely what they who stand most steadily 
against her foresee. It is for the fulfillment of 
this vision that they desire her military over- 
throw. Her own nobler being, her own mis- 
sion to humanity, depends upon her retributive 
defeat. 



AND THE world's PEACE 31 

Already, even while their voices are yet un- 
heard amidst the tumult, are Germany's truest 
teachers calling her to come forth from her 
Prussian and predacious today into the prom- 
ise of a renunciant and ministrant tomorrow. 
Already, is the heart of the German people 
appealing to the world for patient opportunity 
and encouragement when the war is done. It 
may he that then again will revive, and in a 
new envisioned modernity, that devout and 
romantic life, that wedded domesticity and 
adventure, so common to the Germany of old. 
We may then look again for apostles like 
Herder and Oberlin, and mayhap the greater 
Beethoven will be born, and the efficiency of 
the German become so chivalric, so consecrate 
and contributory, that the nations, each bring- 
ing its own especial gift, will rejoice in the 
service which that efficiency offers. 



PRESIDENT WILSON'S program is 
also the repudiation of the performance of 
hate. He is not deterred by the fact that the 
Hterature of hatred holds the day. Do you 
doubt that it does? Upon my table are recent 
numbers of representative reviews of different 
countries. I go through them at random, to 
behold writer after writer, teacher after 
teacher, bowing down in the House of Hate. 
Let me take a typical instance. I find Pro- 
fessor Kuno Francke, in the Atlantic Monthly 
for February, reporting the social and re- 
ligious virtues of the changed Germany he 
foresees. He informs us that this spiritual- 
ized Germany is the ardent and absorbing con- 
cern of the Emperor, whom he considers as 
"the man who in this war has been to all his 
subjects a shining example of real greatness 



AND THE world's PEACE 33 

of character." Even so, he declares that the 
war, regardless of its outcome, ''will leave for 
many years to come such a vast accumulation 
of hatred, jealousy and mutual fear among all 
European nations that any grouping of pow- 
ers for the maintenance of peace will have to 
depend upon the full military strength of each 
of its members." 

Thus speaks the trained observer, thus 
speak the outward facts. And if we try to 
count the dead, if we consider what unremit- 
ting blunders and how little brains go into the 
present government of the world, we must con- 
cede that the conclusion is logically correct. 
But now, as always, is mere logic a liar; now, 
as always, the trained observer fails to observe 
— fails to penetrate the facts before his eyes. 
This is the case with even a teacher so com- 
pletely equipped, so sympathetic and sincere, 
as Professor Francke. This noble and gifted 
German knows not the heart of his Germany; 
nor apprehends he the purpose that is forming 
in the midst of Europe — yea, and that shall 



34 WOODROW WILSON 

soon become enactive and creative in the reso- 
lute soul of the world. Despite the world's 
red testimony to the contrary, the days of the 
institutions and the mobilizations of hatred are 
numbered; and numbered also are the laws and 
customs that belong to economic and social re- 
venge. 

Hate does not reside in the heart of the peo- 
ples: it is not there except as it is kindled hy 
the political and journalistic mercenaries of the 
owners and the rulers. The hate which now 
seems to he filling and consuming the peoples 
is not real; it is artificial and shallow and tran- 
sient. They are blijid who think this war will 
leave generations and organizations of hatred 
behind it. It will do nothing of the kind. 
The result will rather be this — that the war 
will burn up the hatreds of both the present and 
the past. There will be a purification of the 
world from hatred before long. The foolish- 
ness of hate is already apparent to the soldiers 
in the trenches, and to their fathers and moth- 
ers and wives at home, I have seen it — and I 



AND THE world's PEACE 35 

dare to declare it — that there was never so lit- 
tle of hate in the world as now. Hate was 
never so near to extinction as it is at this most 
embattled moment of man's planetary career. 
And it is because of its repudiation of hate that 
President Wilson's immortal appeal becomes 
perceptive and prophetic beyond anything 
coming from the lips of a leader for many gen- 
erations. 



XI 

IT is easy to babble of Utopia in reply. It 
is the custom of cowards and cynics, of spir- 
itual indolence and social selfishness, to deride 
as Utopian whatever requires high risk and 
bold sacrifice. But what else than the effort for 
our life's perfectability has yet proved prac- 
ticable ? Do we call the present way of carry- 
ing on our planet a success? Could the mind 
of an insane god conceive a madder world than 
the one the practical man is now furnishing us ? 
Is this universal tragic fiasco the kind of com- 
pliment the world's wise and prudent desire? 
It is time to ask and to answer — time to take 
knowledge of the unfailing imbecility, of the 
ebbless confusion and woe, the unreckonable 
wreckage and waste, that forever course what 
we purblindly regard as the practical adminis- 
tration of our mortal affairs. Thus we shall 

36 



AND THE world's PEACE 37 

one day conclude, I perceive, that only Utopia 
is practicable. We shall see that no peace is 
procurable, either by a world or by nations or 
by individuals, save in the realization of the 
ideal: we shall never get on with less than the 
best. It is Utopia or perdition that awaits the 
human race in the end: it is the kingdom of 
heaven or yet deeper hells than the one through 
which the world is now wading. 



XII 

WHO knows if, after all, the war be not 
a preparation of the peoples for a gen- 
eral society which shall at last comprehend and 
harmonize all the facts and forces of the 
world's indivisible life? It may be that the 
cannons are God's voices, that the armies are 
harrowing the fields for God's planting. In- 
deed, there has been an abundant divine sowing 
since the challenge to civilization resounded 
from the imperial palace at Berlin. And the 
first harvest is already ripe for such as are wise 
for the reaping. Even whilst the armies 
march on, the soldiers are asking questions that 
have never been asked before in this world ; and 
the same questions are on the lips of the 
women and the fathers at home, and even awed 
children are whispering them. And all these 
are charged with a wiser wonderment than has 

38 



AND THE world's PEACE 39 

hitherto drawn the human family together. 
They perceive — ^the majority of men and 
women today perceive — ^that war must be made 
anachronistic and senseless and cowardly. 
There is forming a great resolution, linking up 
the nations and the legions into an invisible 
freemasonry, that this shall be the last such 
catastrophe which man inflicts upon himself. 
A world-citizenry is suddenly springing into 
being; and it may not be long till it takes pos- 
session of its own, gathering not only all peo- 
ples into its concord, including every sentient 
being and excluding none, but also our whole 
planetary life, the whole procession of nature. 
There are many signs that the peoples may 
soon open their eyes, beholding each other as 
members of one eternal family, never divided 
in reality but only in appearance, nor made 
enemies by else than the perennial exploitage 
of parasitic systems and sovereignties. 



XIII 

THE continuance of man upon the earth 
has the nature of a perpetual miracle. 
Our usual collective ways are downward, de- 
scending anon into hadean delirium and de- 
struction; and whenever the race or the na- 
tion is lifted and started anew, it is by spiritual 
precipitation. Great religious reformations, 
reconstructive national revolutions, like historic 
individual conversions, have come as comes the 
thief in the night : even if envisioned eyes have 
foreseen them, even if prophetic voices have 
foretold them, at an unexpected hour they ap- 
pear. A tremendous and transcending crisis, 
sudden as the dawn in the East, swift as the 
lightning in the West, seizes strong Saul of 
Tarsus and nevermore lets him go; or seizes 
the France of the Revolution, thereby anew 
creating the world. 

40 



AND THE world's PEACE 41 

May it not be that the supreme miracle, the 
most encompassing and conclusive of conver- 
sions, is about to happen now? May it not be 
that the world, threatening and breathing out 
slaughter, is unknowingly on its way to Da- 
mascus, soon to be seized by an enlightenment 
that shall pitch the race upon an entirely new 
plane of experience? I believe this to be the 
most probable ultimation of the war. It is 
probable that this deepening human night, 
sphering the earth in sorrow and terror and 
tragedy unthinkable, will end in the break of 
an amazing and ineffable day ; in the wonder of 
men finding each other out for the first time, 
and from London to Ultima Thule, from the 
earth's rims and edges to the soul's receding 
frontiers. It is probable that, despairing of 
help in teachers and governors, discovering 
that society has built upon the worst, the na- 
tions will together resolve to make trial of the 
best, and so take up their procession toward 
the communal world. It is probable that we 
shall thus at last believe the report of Him we 



42 WOODROW WILSON 

have so long rejected, having finally seen 
through the folly and falsity of every other re- 
port of life. It is probable that the Christ 
will so come again, not merely or at all as a 
single unique individual, but in the radiant and 
robust self -leadership of the peoples — this un- 
folding of the manful mind of God, of the om- 
nipotent will to love, in a mutual-membered 
humanity. 



XIV 

EARTH'S present condition, I know, 
would seem to discredit such promise, to 
disprove such probabihty. I am not ignorant 
of the human fact : I have seen what is happen- 
ing: what seemed social order is disintegrating 
forever: on the crumbhng walls I have 
watched, amid the moral and material ruin I 
have worked, and the sorrow I have searched. 
Standing now at one of the teeming crossways 
of Europe, I look out upon a world ablaze and 
bemazed, even well-nigh demented, by a war 
that is slipping from mortal control; a world 
submerged and benumbed, a world almost be- 
sotted, by a woe beyond mortal sounding or 
surcease. It is a world, too, compelled to this 
table of anguish, this orgy of death, by the oc- 
cult power, by the malign and mysterious me- 
taphysics, of a monstrous finance, encoiling 

43 



M WOODROW WILSON 

and conscripting the nations, and outmeasur- 
ing existing political imagination or mastery: 
and this finance, appropriating the pan-Ger- 
man imperial purpose, is also allied with a 
power that is blacker and still more occult — 
a power concerned with the conscription and 
exploitage of the soul. All this I see, and 
more. But even so, despite the triune Satan 
to whom we thus seem awhile delivered, de- 
spite the despairs and delusions of these blood- 
drunken days, I also see that the world is in- 
stinct with an unwonted expectancy, with a 
sense of some near Messianic intervention and 
pervasion, and that a change of upward and 
universal scope is preparing. At any hour, 
in the twinkling of an eye, the change may 
come, and an indwelling Divine Social Pres- 
ence enfold and unite the aware and glad peo- 
ples. 

It is thus that the peoples, while the accosted 
rulers stand astonished or derisive, have given 
ear to the wistful but commanding summons 
of President Woodrow Wilson. His speech 



AND THE world's PEACE 45 

seemeth strange indeed, for one having au- 
thority so great, and his voice hath the sound of 
one coming from afar. He has startled the 
nations with news — with a news whose signifi- 
cance is yet unguessed by the herald or his 
harkeners. Unknown to them, unknown to 
himself, he has announced that Return which 
is to be at once the conclusion and the true be- 
ginning of history. His words are the sign 
that there are sons of men who are about to be- 
come manifest sons of God, perceptive and 
virile with His love, unfearing and audacious 
in His freedom, His alert and inventive fel- 
low-workers in an eternity of creative adven- 
ture. And these words the world will remem- 
ber, this news the ages will confirm, when the 
war shall have paled into a dusty incident of 
humanity's home-coming. 



II 

THE MAN 
AND THE PRESIDENT 

First published, under the title of "President Woodrow 
Wilson/* in La Semaine Litteraire, Geneva, Decem- 
ber iQj 1916, on the occasion of Mr. JVilsons 
re-election to the presidency. 



THE MAN 
AND THE PRESIDENT 



MORE than any other man now living, 
Woodrow Wilson is likely to receive 
and to hold the world's attention. Deeply, 
and with broad and shrewdest kindness, he 
broods the human problem. He sees far into 
the future, and he has clear ideas as to some 
of the things to be done. He knows, too, how 
to dispense with banners, and how to accord 
his most revolutionary measures to the "still 
small voice." His largest intentions are hid 
within himself; he tells as little as possible be- 
forehand ; he prefers to let his mind be revealed 
by results rather than promises. He knows 
that, in some crises, men are too slow and 
doubtful, too double-minded, to respond to 

49 



50 WOODROW WILSON 

the great appeal. They must be started in 
the new direction with a kind of divine stealth, 
and without being told whither they go. It is 
only after they enter the better condition, the 
larger freedom and the fairer faith, that they 
discover they have been led more wisely than 
they knew, and are able to perceive the nobler 
prospect. 

Such is the quality of Wilson's leadership. 
It is this spiritual adroitness, this union of ex- 
traordinary political idealism with an equal de- 
gree of political cunning, that is his chief char- 
acteristic ; and it is this that persuades the peo- 
ple to trust him, even if it be somewhat blindly. 
It is thus, too, that his stature is constantly en- 
larging, even unto the proportions of Wash- 
ington and Lincoln. 

Woodrow Wilson was re-elected to the 
presidency despite the opposition of the most 
powerful interests ever allied against an 
American presidential candidate. He defied 
the world's boldest financial organizations, now 
centered in New York, and equipped for com- 



AND THE world's PEACE 51 

mand or for massacre. The whole German 
race, from Potsdam to San Francisco, worked 
tirelessly and malignly for his defeat. With 
equal industry and intrigue, the Roman Cath- 
olic hierarchy also labored to prevent his re- 
election. And yet, notwithstanding the ven- 
omed and united efforts of his opponents, he 
was the choice of the American people. Now 
that he is elected, even many who decried him 
are relieved by the sense of some new safety 
which his presence offers to civilization — to a 
civilization, indeed, that seems about to de- 
stroy itself. 

I know his European critics assert that Mr. 
Wilson stands for the material interests of 
America. But he could not be more com- 
pletely misread: the great material interests, 
the materialist philosophers also, are straight 
against him, are his bitterest foes. So far 
from being a materialist, his advocacy of a 
world-democracy is in order that there may be 
a sphere for the true spiritual unfoldment of 
both the collectivity and the individual. It 



52 WOODROW WILSON 

is for this he has set before the single soul, and 
before each citizenry, the goal of a just and 
joyous society of nations. 



II 

AMONG European peoples, especially on 
the Continent, there is a curious and in- 
credible ignorance regarding the relation of 
Mr. Wilson to Germanism. I have just read 
the astounding information, given by a sup- 
posedly authoritative writer on American af- 
fairs, that the pro-Germans of America voted 
for the President's re-election. It would be 
difficult to make a statement more contrary 
to the truth. Mr. Hughes, the opponent of 
Mr. Wilson, undoubtedly owed his nomination 
to German influence. In America, the fact is 
scarcely disputed. The German- American 
Alliance, claiming the political control of three 
million citizens, officially instructed them to 
vote for Hughes. The German Catholics of 
America, by their congress in New York City, 
likewise demanded Wilson's condemnation and 

63 



54 WOODROW WILSON 

rejection. The German newspapers of the 
United States, with hardly an exception, vin- 
dictively strove for the same result. 

Then, on October 9th, before a vast au- 
dience in Philadelphia, Mr. Hughes publicly 
committed himself to a course of action that 
could have come to nothing else than obedience 
to the behest of Germany that America should 
break, or try to break, the British blockade. 
If Mr. Hughes had been elected, and if his 
words meant anything at all, his administration 
inevitably would have brought him into conflict 
with the Allies, thus ranging America on the 
side of Germany. As the Herold (German) 
of New York said: *'0f all the declarations 
which the Republican candidate has thus far 
made, that of Monday in Philadelphia is by far 
the most important. . . . He did not actually 
mention England by name, but his words left 
no room for doubt about his meaning. . . . 
Every citizen of German origin should cast his 
vote for Hughes." 

Mr. Norman Hapgood, in the Independent 



AND THE world's PEACE 55 

(New York) of November 6th, and Mr. Frank 
Percy Olds, in the Atlantic Monthly of Sep- 
tember, have well and carefully summarized 
the German attitude toward Mr. Wilson. To 
such as would like to look further into the sub- 
ject, I would suggest a perusal of these sum- 
maries. I can only quote briefly, but the ex- 
amples I give are representative and typical. 
Said the Staatz-Zeitung, the organ of the most 
powerful German-American financial inter- 
ests : "German- Americans, who, as citizens of 
the United States, were received by Mr. 
Hughes, to whom he as an American declared 
that the interests of America stand before all 
others, are thereby firmly convinced that 
Charles E. Hughes is worthy of the confidence 
of all American citizens and that his election to 
the presidency of the United States will be a 
blessing." The Chicago A bendpost, which bit- 
terly opposed the re-election of Wilson and 
favored the election of Hughes, made the fol- 
lowing pronouncement: "For many years 
back, the German- Americans have been flatter- 



56 WOODROW WILSON 

ing themselves with the hope that the founding 
of the National German- American Alliance 
might become the point of departure for a 
healthy political activity. That was at least 
one reason for founding the National Alliance 
for a great number of Germans who took a 
greater interest than usual in the public affairs 
of the country. It is better to say right out. 
Yes, we favor a policy which will be advan- 
tageous to Germany." Consonant with this, 
the press-bureau of the German- American Al- 
liance issued the following declaration: "In 
unity is power, and the power of American citi- 
zens of German descent and their political sig- 
nificance is centered in the preservation of their 
unity, which is the goal of the German- Ameri- 
can Alliance. Every attempt to break it up 
and to destroy it amounts to treason to the cul- 
tural mission of the German race in the United 
States of America." The St. Paul Volkszei- 
tung declared that President Wilson's foreign 
policy had resulted in uniting all German- 
Americans at last, and in uniting them against 



AND THE world's PEACE 57 

his administration. The Deutscher Corre- 
pondent, of Baltimore, considered that, in op- 
posing. President Wilson, Germans were pre- 
venting the Anglicizing of the American peo- 
ple. The Milwaukee Germania Herold urged 
that Lutherans and Catholics, and "all citi- 
zens in whose veins German blood flowed," 
should unite in opposition to Wilson and in 
favor of Hughes. The German leaders in 
America expressed their hatred of Wilson as 
one who had never known "Kultur"; as one 
who had always been an Anglo-maniac and an 
agitator for the return of the United States to 
the English colonial system. Any good Re- 
publican could win against Wilson, thought 
the Cleveland Waecliter und Anzeiger, and the 
Germania Herold proclaimed that the Ger- 
man-American displeasure with Wilson was 
shown by the remarkable circumstance that not 
one German paper of America, even of his own 
Democratic party, supported him. The Ex- 
celsior^ organ of the German Catholics, con- 
demned the supporters of Wilson as pseudo- 



58 WOODROW WILSON 

patriots — "patriots for revenue only" — ^their 
patriotism being imported from London. An- 
other influential German paper, in an Inde- 
pendence Day editorial, asserted that America 
had again become, under President Wilson's 
administration, a British vassal state. Said 
the St. Louis Westliclie Post: "Because of his 
one-sidedness, nothing which Democratic 
leaders can say or do will make German- Amer- 
icans friends of Mr. Wilson again." "The 
great mass of the German- Americans," said 
Amerika, another German Catholic organ, 
"are through with him and only circumstances 
now quite unforeseen could bring about a 
reconciliation. They cannot be talked down." 
And again the Excelsior^ speaking of the 
American pro- Allies, had this to say: "They 
are only Anglo-Saxons working on Cecil 
Rhodes's testament, to the end that the proud, 
independent United States may again be 
brought under the yoke of Old England. 
And at their head — intentionally or not — 
stands Woodrow Wilson, who still calls him- 



AND THE world's PEACE 59 

self President of the United States, but who 
really is nothing more than a British colonial 
director." Still more hateful were the words 
of another German- American organ, which de- 
nounced President Wilson as a lackey in Brit- 
ain's livery, "kissing the hand of his Britannic 
majesty" while the latter, "kicks him like a 
dog." The Waechter und Anzeiger pro- 
claimed that *'to speak of a crime on the part 
of Germany in the Lusitania case is the most 
foolish cant conceivable. Our munition ex- 
ports, America's wallowing in blood-money, 
America's self-deception — these are crimes 
also on the conscience of our own people." 
The criticism concludes with the statement that 
President Wilson ought to have been Czar. 

Nor only in America, but in Germany as 
well, was the defeat of Wilson and the elec- 
tion of Hughes urged upon German-Ameri- 
can citizens. By all the German official press 
was America declared to be, under the admini- 
stration of President Wilson, an ally of France 
and England. A cartoon in Jugend repre- 



60 WOODROW WILSON 

sents England as piously distributing thou- 
sand-pound notes wherewith to convince Amer- 
ican voters of the need of Wilson's election. 

Mr. Hughes was the avowed candidate of 
Berlin for nomination at the Republican Con- 
vention in Chicago, and for election to the 
presidency after the nomination had been 
made. Notwithstanding his fervent Ameri- 
canism, his administrative policy, had he been 
elected, would have been qualified, inevitably 
if unconsciously, by the fact he was the choice 
of Germany; and to say, as has been said by 
European journals, that Mr. Wilson received 
the pro-German vote is much the same as if 
some historian should announce that Martin 
Luther received his chief support from the 
Pope of Rome. 



Ill 

MY interpretation of President Wilson 
may seem to be contradicted by his de- 
lay in joining final issue with Germany, 
I think, however, if all the facts and forces 
with which he has had to work were considered, 
the contradiction would prove unreal. I could 
wish, it is true, that he had protested against 
the violation of Belgium. I could also wish 
that he had broken with Germany at the time 
of the sinking of the JLusitania. I would re- 
joice if America were now battling for the 
democratic principle, for the spiritual exist- 
ence of the race, in fellowship with England 
and Italy and France. I conceive our en- 
forced neutrality to be both a spiritual and a 
political failure of our national being. If it 
continues throughout the war, the moral and 

61 



62 WOODROW WILSON 

intellectual disaster to America will be greater 
than the like disaster to Europe. 

But this neutrality is not to be charged to 
President Wilson. There has been no time 
when either his cabinet, the House of Con- 
gress, or the people, would have supported him 
in a declaration of war against Germany. We 
know, now, how unsupported he was by his 
ministers in the affair of the Lusitania; how 
reluctantly the House of Congress consented 
to his Sussex message. We must remember, 
too, how many of its members are of German 
birth or descent. We must also consider that 
war with Germany meant, in all probability, 
civil war with America — possibly a state of un- 
exampled national anarchy, savagely inspired 
by the omnipresent apostles of Germanism. 

Mr. Wilson is not the government ; he is not 
the people; and he could only do the best 
the national circumstances would allow. We 
must not think that the protest of elect souls of 
New York and New England represents the 
national mind. These do not articulate the 



AND THE world's PEACE 63 

feeling or will, numerically speaking, of even a 
large minority. The great body of the na- 
tion — especially of Middle America — is sohdly 
opposed to participation in the war. It was 
left to Mr. Wilson to interpret, as radically 
and effectually as he could, the people who had 
chosen him to be their spokesman and the 
executive of their will. 



IV 

1 SUSPECT that, if the truth were dis- 
cerned or revealed, we should find Mr. 
Wilson has taken, after all, the course most 
contributory to the cause of the Allies — and 
this he has had to do quietly and covertly. The 
world-war has staged for him many theatric 
opportunities, but he has avoided the dramatic 
in order to accomplish the essential. Between 
his well-nigh exasperating patience and instant 
war there was no middle-ground. To have 
protested against the violation of Belgium 
would have meant war, and that shortly. The 
same was true in the case of the Lusitania, 
And war between America and Germany 
meant cutting off the supplies upon which the 
success of the Allies depends. Submarines 
would have blocked the American coasts; the 
shipments of munitions to Europe would have 

64 



AND THE world's PEACE 65 

ceased; America's resources would have been 
absorbed in her own military and naval prepa- 
rations. Thus Mr. Wilson could not have 
kept open the door — as he certainly has — for 
England and France to obtain munitions and 
money from America. And the European 
war would probably have ended before Amer- 
ica could render effectual military aid. 

Finally, President Wilson's refusal to break 
the British blockade is one of the great strate- 
gic facts of the war — perhaps the most decisive 
fact, when all is said, in holding open the gates 
of advantage for the Allies. Without his 
action in this regard, the Allies could not win 
the war; and in her understanding of this, Ger- 
many is correct. Indeed, at this moment, 
it is Germany that would be altogether 
the gainer, so far as the European conflict is 
concerned, by war with America. At the 
same time, and in everything that practically 
counts, the Allies would be the losers. Ger- 
many knows this so well that she persists in 
trying to force the hand of President Wilson ; 



66 WOODROW WILSON 

and President Wilson knows it so well that he 
persists in his nominal neutrality — and per- 
sists in spite of the fact that he can make no 
explanation, nor speak the words that would 
expose the hypocrisies and brutalities of his 
most relentless and unscrupulous opponents. 

Mr. Wilson has also, in each crisis that Ger- 
many has precipitated, looked beyond the pres- 
ent war's immediate issues. Longingly and 
hopefully, he peers into a future wherein ques- 
tions between nations are settled without war. 
If America should now take up arms, with the 
whole world thus involved, soon every sem- 
blance of international law would end. Mr. 
Wilson has felt it to be the mission of America, 
at this time of diplomatic anarchy, to stand for 
a general public law and justice based upon 
agreement. He has tried to make every crisis 
an opportunity for the enunciation and devel- 
opment of a new international righteousness. 
Wisely or unwisely, he used the case of the 
Lusitania to try to wrest from Germany some 
confession of public sin, some acknowledg- 



AND THE world's PEACE 67 

merit of international principle. We should 
also remember, in our discussion of Mr. Wil- 
son's administrative conduct, that his message 
to Congress, at the time of the sinking of the 
Sussex, was the completest arraignment of 
Germany that has yet been made by diplom- 
acy. The condemnations of English writers 
and diplomats weigh lightly in comparison 
with the words of judgment passed upon Ger- 
many by that message. Never in the history 
of the world, so far as I know, has the ruler of 
one nation held up another to such final and 
universal reprobation. Only by an unex- 
ampled national repentance, can Germany 
erase the record thus written so deeply against 
her. 



ITIT'OODROW WILSON does not be- 
^ ^ lieve in war as a rational method of 
civilization. He does not believe in mili- 
tary might as a continuing mode of justice 
or progress. He does not believe that things 
are finally settled by war. He sees war rather 
as a means of confusing old problems, and of 
precipitating needless problems new. He con- 
cedes to the strong nations no right to impose 
their will upon the weak. He stands for a 
universal politic so new, so revolutionary, so 
creative of a different world than ours, that 
few have begun to glimpse his vision or to ap- 
prehend his purpose. His eyes are fixed upon 
a goal that is far beyond the present faith of 
nations. His inaugural address before the 
League to Enforce Peace is perhaps the most 
pregnant utterance of a national chief in two 

68 



AND THE world's PEACE 69 

thousand years. I know of no man so re- 
sponsibly placed as Mr. Wilson who has 
spoken words so weighted with the world's des- 
tiny. He proposes a literal and working 
brotherhood of nations, issuing in an ultimately 
co-operative and concordant mankind. He 
announces the use of force to prevent instead 
of to create war. He declares that it is the 
business of strong nations to be the saviours 
and not the exploiters of the nations which are 
weak or small. He overthrows the whole evil 
conception upon which imperialism is based. 

Thus the use of governments by the dealers 
in national debts, by the great concessionaires, 
must, according to Mr. Wilson's pronounce- 
ment, come to an end. Acting by this inter- 
national ethic, would Europe and America co- 
operate in assisting China to develop her own 
resources, her own institutions, her own free- 
dom and social redemption; England would 
pour such resources and service into India as 
to enable India to become a vast and self-gov- 
erning nation in herself; America would help 



70 WOODROW WILSON 

Mexico to free herself from both Mexican 
landlords and American concessionaires. The 
ethic has been well expressed by President Wil- 
son himself in explaining to Miss Tarbell his 
actions toward Mexico. "Do you remember," 
he asked, "the angry crowd that was worked up 
in Ephesus by a silversmith who told his work- 
men that Paul would surely spoil their trade 
of making shrines for Diana, if they did not 
stop his talk of there being no gods made by 
hands? The men filled the streets, crying, 
*Great is Diana of the Ephesians,' until the 
town clerk came out and said : * You idiots, no- 
body is hurting Diana. If you have a com- 
plaint against any man, take it to the courts, 
but stop this uproar or you'll get into trouble.' 
The episode in Ephesus is very like what is go- 
ing on today in the country in regard to 
Mexico. A few men who have property down 
there have worked up a claque to cry: * Great 
is order in Mexico.' But it is order not for the 
Mexicans, but for some of the foreign in- 
vestors, . . . Never, in all of their appeals to 



AND THE world's PEACE 71 

me, has one of them mentioned the fifteen mil- 
lion Mexicans. It is always our investments." 
Speaking of the same subject on another occa- 
sion, the President said: "I am more inter- 
ested in the fortunes of oppressed men and piti- 
ful women and children than in any property 
rights whatever. Mistakes I have no doubt 
made in this perplexing business, but not in 
purpose or object. More is involved than the 
immediate destinies of Mexico and the rela- 
tions of the United States with a distressed 
and distracted people. All America looks on. 
Test is now being made of us whether we be 
sincere lovers of popular liberty or not, and are 
indeed to be trusted to respect national sov- 
ereignty among our weaker neighbors." 



VI 

1 OUGHT to say — perhaps ought to have 
said at the beginning — that I have no 
shadow of authority for interpreting Wood- 
row Wilson. There has never been speech 
between us, nor have I looked upon 
his face. And were he choosing an interpreter, 
I am sure it would not be such a one as my- 
self. Besides, I belong not to his political 
party: I am, and shall be till I die, a Socialist 
— even though I know of no Socialist party, at 
the present time, that has more than a legend- 
ary and misrepresentative relation to Social- 
ism. 

But ought not all this to give value to my 
appreciation of America's Chief Servant? 
Whether it be so or not, my understanding of 
the man I must proclaim. For I perceive — or 
certainly seem to perceive — that Woodrow 

72 



AND THE world's PEACE 73 

Wilson is not only the greatest statesman that 
has appeared in the world for many years — 
great indeed beyond comparison with any save 
Lincoln : he is also a determined and tremend- 
ous radical: he is a redeemer of democracy. 
He is revolutionary beyond anything his words 
reveal, beyond anything his contemporaries 
have discerned. He has accomplished a com- 
plete change of direction in the course of Amer- 
ican political development — in the course of 
the world's ongoing as well. He has indeed 
been extraordinarily shifty in the accomplish- 
ment of the things he believes basic and right ; 
but the shifts he has made have been linked to- 
gether in a divinely democratic processional. 

Consequently, whenever and wherever the 
issue between property and the people has 
been clear, in not a single instance has he stood 
for property, but in every instance for the peo- 
ple. In the Federal Reserve Banks, as well as 
in other legislative achievements, he has know- 
ingly undermined certain of the foundations 
upon which our capitalist society rests; at the 



74 WOODROW WILSON 

same time, he has been preparing foundations 
for a truly co-operative society. Without 
proclamation, with none of the jargon common 
to radicals, he has shown himself more pro- 
foundly conscious of the working-class than 
many of the working-class leaders; and this 
notwithstanding his previous academic career 
and associations. As compared with Wood- 
row Wilson, there are Socialist spokesmen who 
are bourbon in their understanding and sym- 
pathy. As contrasted with America's Presi- 
dent, the parliamentary leaders of German So- 
cialism are medieval reactionaries. 



VII 

Tyi700DR0W WILSO]>^ believes in the 
^ ^ whole length and logic of democracy 
— democracy in political relations, democ- 
racy in industry, democracy in things in- 
tellectual and spiritual. If we could look deep 
into this man's soul, I think we should find 
there the ideal of a world at last arriving at a 
universal communism of production and dis- 
tribution, with a common and unfettered free- 
dom as regards the right of each individual to 
choose the way in which he shall go, and grow, 
and give himself. Has he not well hinted this 
ideal in words spoken at his dedication of Lin- 
coln's birthplace? "Is not this," he asks, "an 
altar upon which we may forever keep alive the 
vestal fire of democracy as upon a shrine at 
which some of the deepest and most sacred 
hopes must constantly be rekindled? And 
only those who hve can rekindle them. The 

76 



76 WOODROW WILSON 

only stuff that can retain the Hf e-giving heat is 
the stuff of living hearts. And the hopes of 
mankind cannot be kept alive by words merely, 
by constitutions and doctrines of right and 
codes of liberty. The object of democracy is 
to transmute these into the life and action of so- 
ciety, the self-denial and self-sacrifice of heroic 
men and women willing to make their lives an 
embodiment of right and service and enlight- 
ened purpose. The commands of democracy 
are as imperative as its privileges and oppor- 
tunities are wide and generous. Its compul- 
sion is upon us. It will be great and lift a 
great light for the guidance of the nations only 
if we are great and carry that light high for 
the guidance of our own feet. We are not 
worthy to stand here unless we ourselves be in 
deed and in truth real democrats and servants 
of mankind, ready to give our very lives for the 
freedom and justice and spiritual exaltation of 
the great nation which shelters and nurtures 
us." 

Woodrow Wilson beholds this vision, he f ol- 



AND THE world's PEACE 77 

lows this faith, because he is both sturdily and 
mystically Christian in his view of our com- 
mon life's collective possibilities. The utter- 
most democracy, the democracy that scales the 
whole human octave, is to him the certain issue 
of the idea for which Jesus lived and died. 
This man conceives, with John Milton and Al- 
fred the Great, with John Stuart Mill and 
Joseph Mazzini, that the mind of mutual serv- 
ice, the literal and general application of the 
law of love, is the only practicable social basis, 
the only national security, the only foundation 
for international peace. He believes that the 
Sermon on the Mount is the ultimate consti- 
tution of mankind ; and he intends, by hook or 
crook if you will, by the wisdom of the serpent 
and the secrecy of the priest, to get this founda- 
tion underneath the unaware American nation. 
He cunningly hopes, he divinely schemes, to 
bring it about that America, awake at last to 
her national selfhood and calling, shall become 
as a colossal Christian apostle, shepherding the 
world into the kingdom of God. 



1 



Ill 

HIS INITIAL EFFORT 

First published, under the title of ''The Note of President 

JVilsonf in the Journal de Geneve, December Jl, 

igi6, on the occasion of President Wilson s 

note, addressed to all the belligerent 

nations, of December i8. 



i 



HIS INITIAL EFFORT 



THE European state of mind regarding 
President Wilson's note seems to be one 
of bewilderment — of bewilderment mingled 
with tepid hope. There have been attempts 
at criticism, and many discussions; but they 
have been aimless, on the whole, and extraor- 
dinarily tame and ineffectual. Journalists and 
statesmen feel compelled to speak, but what to 
say appears beyond their powers of compre- 
hension. They seem unable to conceive or even 
guess what the President means; and, rather 
than the confused contributions they have prof- 
fered their respective publics, it would have 
been better if they had frankly confessed their 
inability. Nor does one of the Western 
Powers know precisely how the note is taken 

81 



82 WOODROW WILSON 

by another; and the Central Powers approach 
a like predicament. Curiously enough, how- 
ever, it is England that has misconstrued the 
note most completely, while it is Germany that 
somewhat perceives the President's purpose. 
And the perception is tremendously disturbing 
to Germany's masters. 

Probably this is what Mr. Wilson expected; 
for his note was written for Germany, and it is 
through diplomatic necessity that he addressed 
it to the belligerents in common. It is this 
diplomatic necessity that has masked his mean- 
ing in what seems an unemotional and repre- 
hensible impartiality, and that has brought 
such stupefaction to Europe. 

Yet the note is, in effect, nothing else than an 
ultimatum to Germany. It is an ultimatum 
that may bring either peace or war ; but surely 
it is war rather than peace it portends. For 
Mr. Wilson knows that, if the war continues, 
his country cannot much longer remain apart. 
The world cannot go on burning, and so big a 
house as the United States of America escape 



AND THE world's PEACE 83 

the flames. In one way or another, America 
must try to put out the fire, try to bring the 
conflict to a righteous conclusion — first decid- 
ing, however, on which side she conceives the 
tents of righteousness to stand, and then align 
herself with that side. It is to this end that 
each of the two groups of belligerents is asked 
to state what it is fighting for, and what terms 
of peace will satisfy it; for only so may the 
American States intelligently decide with 
which group to throw their probably conclusive 
resources. 



II 

TJUT, it will be asked, why does he appar- 
-■-^ ently place the belligerents all upon the 
same moral level? This is indeed a pertinent 
and momentous question. If he actually 
means to treat the assassins of Belgian and 
Serbian nationalities, the murderers of the 
Armenian people, the breakers of treaties, the 
slayers of children, the violators of women, the 
destroyers of churches, as entitled to equal con- 
sideration with the defenders of France and 
Belgium and Serbia, then indeed has President 
Wilson intolerably offended that remnant of 
mankind which still hath power to discriminate 
between atrocious wrong and trampled right. 
But let us not be hasty in saying this is what 
he has done. He only says that the belhger- 
ents claim to be fighting for the same ends, and 
to be asking for the same terms of peace. He 

84 



AND THE world's PEACE 85 

would like to know if this is true. Will each 
belligerent state its terms, so that America and 
the other neutral nations may judge? And by 
this simple request, Mr. Wilson may be plac- 
ing Germany in the worst possible position: he 
may be taking the very course that will ex- 
pose her moral nakedness to the world. 

Indeed, more than any other method he could 
have devised, will Mr. Wilson's demand dis- 
close the responsibility for the war; and, fur- 
thermore, it will reveal that the issue of Amer- 
ica is substantially with Germany alone. For 
the terms of the Allies are well enough known : 
they have been repeatedly and frankly stated. 
England seeks nothing in Europe for herself; 
but she requires complete restitution for Bel- 
gium, and the same for France, coupled with 
the return of Alsace-Lorraine. She also in- 
sists upon the restoration and reunion of the 
Servian peoples in a greater Servian kingdom. 
She demands, in fine, the freedom of each peo- 
ple to choose its own national affiliations and 
social development. The requirements of 



86 WOODROW WILSON 

France are identical with those of England. 
Italy asks for herself that part of the Italian 
nation which is still under the dominion of 
Austria; for the rest of Europe, Italy's wishes 
are identical with those of England and 
France. The problem of Russia and Con- 
stantinople is more complicated, and has been 
carefully avoided ; but it would be best that the 
Allies frankly state their engagement with 
Russia. For America will be the last to be 
disturbed by the political transfer of Constan- 
tinople. No country is so desirous as America 
of ridding both Europe and Asia Minor of 
Turkish dominion. Probably America would 
ask for an independent Armenian state, as she 
has always had a special interest in the Ar- 
menian people. 

Germany, on the other hand, has not the 
slightest intention of stating her terms, now or 
at any time. She will deal only in vague and 
bemazing generalities, plausibly and patheti- 
cally expressed. Her proposed negotiations 
for peace have no other end than the decep- 



AND THE world's PEACE 87 

tion of the world and the gaining of time and 
sympathy — no other motive than the prolonga- 
tion of her power to keep and to conquer. If 
she can compel or seduce the Allies to a con- 
ference, she will propose terms befitting a con- 
queror, even though foreknowing their rejec- 
tion. During the continuance of such a con- 
ference, perhaps not less than a year, she could 
greatly renew her resources, while France and 
Russia would be but the more depleted. The 
end of the conference would be that Germany 
would gain by trickery and treachery much of 
what she failed to obtain by war. 

Germany dreams not of peace upon any 
other terms — upon any other terms than such 
as will leave her the overlordship of Middle 
Europe and of Asia Minor ; leave her, in fact, 
in possession of an empire stretching from 
Hamburg to Bagdad, with India and China in 
the horizon. After having fought the foulest 
war, all things considered, that history affords, 
she now seeks to fasten upon the world a still 
fouler peace — ^both the war and the peace hav- 



88 WOODROW WILSON 

ing this pan-Germany empery for their goal. 
If she succeeds, then for a long time to come 
there will be small breathing-room for the soul 
of man upon this planet, and less of freedom 
for his mind. 

In the accomplishment of this empery, Ger- 
many can well dissemble — well afford to make, 
for the moment, what seem to be generous con- 
cessions. But her largest concessions would be 
trifling in comparison with her vast imperial 
gains in the South and the East. Besides, she 
knows well enough that, if she is allowed to 
keep the Balkans and Turkey, it will be but a 
few years till France and Belgium are help- 
lessly hers. This, nor aught else, is the real 
purpose of the German peace propositions. 

It is to bring the German purpose into the 
open that President Wilson has made his re- 
quest. He has undertaken to compel Ger- 
many to show her hand, in order that, in case of 
refusal, the American people will support him 
in the course he must consequently take. 
Either Germany must place all her terms upon 



AND THE world's PEACE 89 

the table, and prove them such as to satisfy the 
new international conscience Mr. Wilson has 
called into being, or she must add America to 
the number of her enemies. And it is thus that 
the first point of our President's note is not 
peace but war. 



Ill 

BUT the note has also a more amazing im- 
port than the psychological preparation 
of the American people; and that is, the op- 
portunity it affords the German Empire to 
end not only the present war, but all war, and 
to give a common and upbuilding peace to the 
family of nations. Never, in the whole unin- 
telligible and wasteful histoiy of man, have 
the rulers of a nation had a chance so replete 
with redemptive possibility as that which our 
President has presented to the rulers of Ger- 
many. Let her — if I may redeem a term from 
the gambler — call the President's divine bluff: 
let her stake her existence and destiny upon one 
throw of faith, one inclusive and irrevocable 
renunciation, one challenging and creative af- 
firmation of man's basic and inviolable brother- 
hood. Let her transmute her incredible cap- 

90 



AND THE world's PEACE 91 

acity for deception and intrigue into one celes- 
tial trick upon the human race. Let her in- 
stantly and specifically, without qualification 
or reservation, give an answer that shall ac- 
cord with Mr. Wilson's invitation. Let her 
place upon the table such conditions of peace 
as shall win the sympathy and applause of even 
her foes. Let her volunteer the complete res- 
toration of Belgium and France, of the Bal- 
kans as well, with compensation for all that 
these invaded countries have suffered. Let 
her propose the full and true rehabihtation of 
Poland, including the provinces attached to 
Prussia. Let her require the integration of 
all the Serbs, and the union of all the Italians. 
Let her demand that the Dardanelles be con- 
sidered an integral part of the Mediterranean, 
neutral and open to all nations equally. Let 
her ask that Constantinople be set apart as the 
seat of an International Tribunal — ^the conse- 
crated capitol of a renascent and resolute 
Christendom. 

If this she will but do — if she will but see and 



92 WOODEOW WILSON 

seize her prodigious opportunity ; if she will but 
realize this new kind of national integrity, this 
new order of national being, then may Ger- 
many, even now and at once, step into a place 
of stupendous spiritual leadership, her sons 
becoming the first born of that superhumanity 
which the prophets of all times and races fore- 
tell. 

She cannot bring back the dead, of course, 
nor restore the desolate or vanished homes. 
She cannot evoke armies of eager workers and 
lovers, of fathers and brothers, from the miles 
and millions of graves which are the seal she 
has now set upon the earth. But she can make 
even these, by her own repentance and rebirth, 
fruitful with new life for the world. 

It is possible for Germany to speak now the 
apocalyptic word — to take now the apocalyptic 
step. It is possible that there are among the 
German tribes men sane and saintly enough, 
men of requisite faith and courage, to sound the 
trumpet that shall waken these tribes, once and 
for all, from the loathsome hypnosis which 



AND THE world's PEACE 93 

none other than some sort of Satan could have 
laid upon them. It is possible for Germany 
to rise from her deep spiritual night, from the 
orgy of murder and lying and madness she has 
therein precipitated, and to invite then the na- 
tions to unite with her in a peace that shall be 
both social and international. It is even pos- 
sible that Germany might suddenly beseek 
Woodrow Wilson to lead the world in the pur- 
suit of this ineffable goal. 



IV 

THE Allies are not without responsibility 
here. They say, and sincerely I believe, 
they have no intention of crushing Germany. 
But why not make this clear to the German 
peoples — why not now appeal to them, plainly 
and unreservedly, even over or under the 
thrones of their rulers? Are there no states- 
men in England or France of such stature and 
strength as to rend the veil of an antique and 
subterranean diplomacy — to step forth from 
its enmeshments and address the German na- 
tion in terms that shall be human and familiar? 
It may be that it is the German head that has 
gone wrong — not the heart; and that if the 
real heart of Germany were authentically and 
wisely invoked, it would repent and respond — 
even to the extent of disencumbering itself of 
its Prussian rulers and teachers. 

94 



AND THE world's PEACE 95 

For the moment, we can only wait — ^wait 
with wonder and anguish — to see whether the 
present hmnan night will darken and deepen, 
or if some unforeseen day of deliverance will 
break. It is the world's most breathless mo- 
ment. The human race trembles in the bal- 
ance. The war, if it continues, may slip from 
the control of its makers and masters. A turn 
of some irresponsible hand, even an idle word, 
may start the race on its new and tremendous 
upward or downward way. Either we shall 
soon be plunging into chaos, and the creation 
of the world begin over again, with perhaps but 
a human remnant in the Creator's hand, or the 
nations must come to some swift resolution, 
some divine determination, taking the course 
of evolution in hand and definitely shaping our 
common future according to a deliberate so- 
cial and spiritual choice. 

Yet now, as at the beginning of the war, the 
lead is with Germany. Through some mys- 
terious dispensation of destiny, it is Germany 
that still holds the scales of decision. We are 



96 WOODROW WILSON 

far from snatching the scales from her hands. 
But it is possible that, through an unprece- 
dented and Pentecostal revolution, she may yet 
humbly entreat the nations to join her in hold- 
ing the mystic balance of a harmonized world. 



IV 

THE PRO-GERMAN MORALITY 
OF THE PACIFIST 

This paper, written in reply to pacifist perversions of 

President Wilson s unfortunate phrase, "peace without 

victory!* was originally published in two parts — 

the first in II Giornale d* Italia, Rome, March 4, 

IQIT ; the second, in the April number of 

La Revue Mensuelle, Geneva, 



THE PRO-GERMAN 

MORALITY OF 

THE PACIFIST 



RECENTLY and severely, an eminent 
Continental critic rebuked the writer of 
this paper for declaring that the European 
war is in reality between two religions, two op- 
posing principles of life — one of these being 
embodied in the Germanism that seeks world- 
dominion by the might of its will and its 
weapons, the other being the continuing pur- 
pose and presence of him we call the Christ. 
To the mind of the critic, Christ is neutral as 
regards the war, holding with neither the one 
nor the other group of belligerents, nor con- 
cerned as to which shall be triumphant. Or 
rather, Christ is in equal opposition to all the 

99 



100 WOODROW WILSON 

fighters: he is the Prince of Peace only, hav- 
ing part with none but the pacifist. Practi- 
cally, if the critic's conception be true, Christ 
is the Divine Absentee, detachedly awaiting 
the termination of the battles, and to be called 
upon as the last resort of mankind. Of the 
Christ who avowed that he came not to bring 
peace but a sword, who declared that he had 
kindled a fire in the earth which none could put 
out till the justice of love prevailed — of him 
the critic seems never to have heard. 

Yet it is the militant Christ who is real, who 
accords with both history and the gospels: the 
Christ of the critic hath no reality. He is but 
an artifice indeed — the pale and nearly puerile 
contrivance of men who would escape the risks 
of the real Christ's robust adventure. It is a 
curious trinity that finds refuge from faith in 
this contrivance: there is first an emasculate 
pacifism, busy and fretful and often ferocious, 
and claiming Jesus for its founder and Tolstoy 
for its prophet; then follows a decadent intel- 
lectualism, an erotic and exhausted modem- 



AND THE world's PEACE 101 

ity, lounging and voluminously lisping, and 
resorting to religion for a last sensation; and 
third in order comes the fashionable reformer 
and social worker — his aesthetics and his sta- 
tistics deranged, his sensibilities insufferably 
shocked, his popularity altogether impaired, by 
the sudden gross arrival of the day of judg- 
ment. And it is these who, — annoyed with 
God's unexpected way of doing, resentful at 
having the strife between light and darkness 
dragged definitely into the open, affecting a 
superior world-sorrow and languishing in 
regions of pietistic fatigue "above the battle," 
— it is these who are now the choicest servants 
of an anointing Germanism. 

I do not mean that Christ is other than the 
Prince of Peace : he stands for a peace so pro- 
found, so determined and delectable, that it 
surpasses any experience or understanding of 
our mortal commonalty. But it is a peace 
proceeding from the conquest of life, and not 
from evasion or compromise. It is a peace 
that will be reached, if ever it possess the 



102 WOODROW WILSON 

earth, through spiritual assault and assimila- 
tion — through the capture and orchestration of 
all material and mechanic facts, all the nat- 
ural and social forces, with which man has to 
do. 

Christ needs no invitation to the thick of the 
human struggle : he has never been absent from 
it. It was there he spoke, there he did his 
work; and it was there that, because of the 
things he said and did, he was haled to an out- 
law's death. And afterward, in the wondrous 
Christian springtune, when to follow Christ 
was the most romantic thing a man could do, 
his disciples were ecstatic warriors. Even 
when they defended not their individual names 
or persons, they were never neutral as regards 
conflicts or principles or institutions. The 
Revelation of St. John — which is a philosophy 
of history as well as the greatest of all sym- 
bolical literature — is a book of war. The only 
ones with whom the apostle and his Master 
seemed altogether impatient were the neutrals ; 
and these John represents as being so disgust- 



AND THE world's PEACE 103 

ing that his Lord spewed them out of his 
mouth. The soul that refused to take sides, 
that was destitute of conviction and passion 
and color, was repulsive and intolerable. The 
neutralism that decried decision, the pacifism 
that disestablished judgment — these furnished 
the last and most loathsome immorality. And 
it is no less than a blasphemy, no less than a 
besmirchment of his name, which places the 
Christ apart from the battles of the day. The 
world-war and its woes, and the whole tragic 
pilgrimage of man, the total track and tramp 
of history, are across and within his inclusive 
heart. 

Nor does the writer of the Apocalypse dif- 
fer, in his opinion of the neutralist, from the 
apostles and law-givers who came before and 
after him. Isaiah viewed the lukewarm and 
the neutral with especial horror. Solon con- 
sidered that the state might forgive its outward 
enemies and its inward rebels; but he thought 
the neutrals should straightway be put to 
death. And to Mazzini these were the black- 



104 WOODROW WILSON 

est of abominations : the worst of the pro-Aus- 
trians were intelligible and pardonable, but 
neutrality was such a particular profanation 
of man's essential divinity, was such a mean 
perversion of man's reason for being, that it 
was fit only to be despised — fit only to be de- 
nied moral consideration, and to be cast from 
the midst of the spiritual decencies. 

Yet behold now this neutrality, wedded to a 
pacifism without intelligence or moral content, 
making its widening and devitalizing way, and 
producing an increasing helplessness to appre- 
hend the meaning of the hour ! 



II 

WE here come upon the dreadest evil 
that has issued from the fall of our 
fabled civilization. To those of us who per- 
ceive, or think we perceive, that mankind is 
one living and continuing organism, one eter- 
nal mutual-membered family, it is not the 
number of the dead that scores most heavily 
against the war. Not the millions of its man- 
gled and slain, not the material ruin it has 
wrought, not the wide desolate districts 
wherein none but the aged and the widowed 
and the orphaned now dwell — not this, not 
this is the war's worst result. Rather is it the 
moral bhght, the spiritual paralysis, which cer- 
tain forces within and around the war are in- 
flicting upon the soul of the world. And it is 
this which so ten^ifies, today, such as have set 
their hopes upon a changed world — upon an 
uprisen and radiant humanity. 

105 



Ill 

THUS it is the habit of the neutralist, the 
purpose of the pacifist — a habit, a pur- 
pose, pursued with a well-nigh sottish persist- 
ence — to compel a regard for the contending 
nations as equals in national morality. And 
how can we reason with such — how can we rea- 
son with men who repeat that there is no differ- 
ence between the German occupation of Bel- 
gium and the Franco-English occupation of 
Greece? Germany invaded Belgium in viola- 
tion of her own signed treaty, and with no 
provocation except the lust for Paris. Beau- 
tiful Belgian cities. Christian and Gothic 
treasures which Philip of Spain respected, an- 
cient shrines which survived even the raid of 
Attila, scores of villages and farmsteads and 
factories, are now rubbish and ashes. Un- 
numbered thousands of Belgium's people are 

106 



AND THE world's PEACE 107 

dead from murder and cold and hunger. Her 
women have been violated, her children tor- 
tured and slain, her families dismembered, and 
well-nigh half a million men and women have 
been carried into slavery. Three million Bel- 
gians are refugees and exiles. All Belgium is 
now a land of mental sorrow and physical mis- 
ery — a nation in chains, a people scourged be- 
yond modern comparison or belief. 

And Greece? Not a man or a woman or 
a child has been harmed, not a house destroyed. 
The Greeks have been protected from the 
treachery of their Germanophile king by the 
two countries, France and England, to which 
Greece owes her liberty; and the Allies will 
doubtless leave Greece in a far better moral 
and material condition than that in which they 
found her. Even granting the violation of 
neutrality, there is no similarity between the 
Allied occupation of Greece and the German 
destruction of Belgium; and it is only the hard- 
iest distortion of facts that presents the two 
cases as similar. 



108 WOODROW WILSON 

And what shall we do with pacifists so 
brazen as to place the Turkish rule of Armenia 
beside the English occupation of Egypt? I 
am among those who have declared, again and 
again, for Egyptian autonomy; and there are 
many Englishmen who today are pledged to 
the self-government of both Egypt and India. 
But we would preserve, when we speak of 
these things, some decent sense of moral pro- 
portion. However blundering and unsym- 
pathetic it be in some of its methods and as- 
pects, we would not place the English govern- 
ment of alien peoples upon a level with the 
Turkish system of government by plunder and 
murder. 

A Germanized Turkey, under the protec- 
tion and patronage of an ostensibly Christian 
Kaiser, has practically exterminated the Ar- 
menian nation. Horrors have been perpe- 
trated upon the Armenians that have no 
parallel — not even in the persecution of the 
early Christians. 

Put Egypt beside Armenia. Before the 



AND THE world's PEACE 109 

English occupation, the Egyptian people were 
the helpless prey of their Turkish pashas. 
They were a nation of plundered serfs, gov- 
erned by rapine and without law, steeped in 
hopeless poverty, living in unlighted despair. 
Egypt has indeed been a land of unbroken 
night for two thousand years, except for the 
one glorious epoch of Neoplatonic and early 
Christian Alexandria. England has given 
order, education, cleanliness, hope and com- 
parative happiness. It is true, she has ex- 
ploited the Egyptians ; she has delayed giving 
them self-government; but it is also true she 
has given them the light of day, and probably 
the first security they have had in the course 
of their history. I have myself talked with 
farmers along a thousand miles of the Nile, 
and I know it is not they who clamor for an 
end of the English occupation. It is the de- 
scendants of the Turkish masters, looking with 
covetous eyes upon the wealth which England 
has developed. And they who have the hardi- 
hood to put upon the same moral level the Eng- 



110 WOODROW WILSON 

lish occupation of Egypt and the Turkish con- 
trol of Armenia, as has been done by French 
pacifists and German pubhcists, — these are 
beyond the reach of moral argument. 






IV 

NOR matters how obvious or odious it be, 
to each decoy which Germany sends forth 
the pacifist responds with his daft indorsement, 
his inane applause. Decoy after decoy, deceit 
after deceit, is borne from Berhn upon pacifist 
banners or by neutral messengers. It was by 
these the plan for peace without victory was 
proclaimed, and by these the Belgian atrocities 
have been explained away. One such pacifist, 
an American educator of high standing, writes 
me an indignant letter about the injustice with 
which Germany has been treated in regard to 
Belgium. She had not carried the Belgians 
into slavery; she had only expatriated them 
out of regard for their welfare; she had 
marched them across the Rhine in order to 
keep them from starvation and deterioration; 

— such is the expressed opinion of my friend. 

Ill 



112 WOODROW WILSON 

Nor does he differ in this from Dr. Krebs, 
the eminent German- Catholic historian. Ac- 
cording to Dr. Krebs, the Germans have be- 
haved with "the patience of angels"; and 
the deeds done against them by the German 
soldiery were the fault of the obdurate Bel- 
gians themselves. And recently his state- 
ment has been approved by an authoritative 
American pacifist — a member of the Stock- 
holm Conference. 

But let us take the reception of the Ger- 
man imposture of Polish independence as a 
special instance of the pacifist's moral inca- 
pacity. The so-called reconstruction of Po- 
land, as planned and announced by Germany, 
was a fraud so obvious and brazen, that it 
seemed impossible for the most stolid pacifist 
to misapprehend it. It was not at all a plan 
for Polish rehabilitation, but for a final Polish 
dissolution. It was a scheme to annex Poland 
to Prussia — that and nothing else; and, in the 
meanwhile, the Poles might be seduced or con- 
scripted into the German army, there to fight 



AND THE world's PEACE 113 

for their own destruction. Representative 
Poles of London and Paris warned the world 
against the deception. Yet the warnings 
counted for nothing so far as the pacifists were 
concerned. The tragic fraud, transparent 
and exposed though it was, became the basis 
of a serious propaganda for Poland, and the 
German deception was acclaimed, — in Amer- 
ica and Switzerland and even France, — as a 
Polish realization. 



OR again, consider how successful has been 
the pacifist propaganda against Brit- 
ish navalism — British navalism thus placed 
upon one moral level with Prussian militarism, 
and presented as an equal international men- 
ace. It is easy to agree that the seas should 
not be imder the dominion or protection of 
any one power; about that there need be no 
debate. But so long as there is no interna- 
tional agreement or arrangement, it is difficult 
to see how naval supremacy could have been 
exercised more justly and generously than 
England has exercised hers. No nation has 
been hurt or hindered by the existence of the 
British navy; on the contrary, it is the British 
navy that has protected the world from the 
German menace. On two occasions, the ships 
of England stood between America and a Ger- 

114 



AND THE world's PEACE 115 

man intervention. But this was to limit or 
prevent war: so far as commerce is concerned, 
the merchant fleets of Germany have gone 
where they would, into all the ports of the 
British dominions, unhindered and unmolested 
by the British navy. And there is not the 
smallest merchant ship of the smallest nation 
that has not had utter freedom to spread its 
sails wherever the British flag symbolized the 
presence of British power. Great Britain has 
policed the seas of the world, and the world has 
reaped the benefit of the protection. And the 
hardiest pacifist is not so unintelligent as not to 
know that he is both arbitrary and base in his 
attempt to equalize the good and the evil of 
Prussian militarism and British navalism. 



VI 

MEANWHILE, under the cover of the 
confusion which her pacifist mission- 
aries create, German marshals anew her mahgn 
forces; anew she prepares her march against 
the spiritual being of humanity. 

For more than forty years, this German 
menace has been productive of an increasing 
political and spiritual derangement of the na- 
tions. For more than forty years, this tramp- 
ling terror and threat in the heart of Europe 
has prevented the world from settling down to 
social and political reconstruction. As little 
as the city may live normally if mad dogs are 
loose in the streets, so the world is unable to 
pursue its normal and nobler development with 
the Prussian loose in its midst. 

Nor is it only the Prussian sword — it is the 
whole mind of Prussia that is deranging and 

116 



AND THE world's PEACE 117 

debauching the nations. Like the progress of 
a mysterious plague, this German mentahty 
goes forth, foreboding the psychic subjection 
of the world. One by one, often group by 
group, intellectuals and internationahsts go 
down before its devices. Peace conferences, 
Socialist parties, Roman Catholic organiza- 
tions, the men of letters who feel themselves 
superior to the strife, the men of money who 
fear the escape of the nations from their con- 
trol — these all unite in the German agendum. 
And unless this German mental penetration be 
discerned for what it is, unless it be transmuted 
and its present and former works destroyed, 
the world itself will be subdued and destroyed. 
For verily, Germany is even now overcom- 
ing the world — overcoming it secretly and 
psychically — overcoming it despite her crimes, 
her infidelities, her losses, and the addition of 
strong nations to her enemies. The pestilen- 
tial pervasiveness of her intrigues, her alliance 
with the elemental earth-forces that would 
drag man back to his primordial pit — by these 



118 WOODKOW WILSON 

is she infecting the conscience and well-nigh 
destroying the moral reason of mankind. We 
face the possible and appalling prospect of a 
world with a Germanized mind and morality. 
And to the monstrously renascent black magic 
of Germany's unyielding past, to her staged 
and histrionic national whines, are not only 
eminent litterateurs and revolutionists surren- 
dering, but also empowered politicians and 
statesmen. Whence a peace more predacious 
than war, and pregnant with ages of iron dark- 
ness, now Cometh apace upon the peoples. It 
is as if the mind of the race were seized by the 
torpor of some returning prehistoric night. 
Wotan and Thor, and the earth's primeval 
creatures, confederate and modernized in the 
German national soul, are in the way of estab- 
lishing a dominion of death over a world that 
has lost the sense of moral reality. 



1 



VII 

SAY not that I speak against peace. 
There need be no debate with me about 
that. A condition of universal peace is my 
supreme desire; for incalculable are the reach 
and the rapidity of the progress which man- 
kind might thereby make. But you cannot 
build the House of Peace upon the sands of 
evasion and cowardice. You cannot procure 
an enduring and honorable international amity 
apart from the causes and consequences of the 
conflict in which Europe is now engaged. The 
whole spiritual question of the present war 
must be faced and settled before there can be a 
peace that will be other than a tragic fraud, and 
the breeding bosom of vaster catastrophes to 
come. You cannot put into the same moral 
category the desire for dominion which inspired 
the German initiative and the self -existence for 

X19 



120 WOODROW WILSON 

which France and Belgium and Servia are 
fighting. You cannot unify the autocratic 
principle which is basic in the Central Empires 
with the democratic principle which is the mov- 
ing force of French and English political 
evolution. You cannot, for the sake of short- 
ening the war, wipe the horrors of Belgium 
from the German slate ; nor the destruction of 
Servia; nor the Armenian massacres and the 
submarine assassinations. A peace bought 
with a price so vile would announce nothing 
less than the moral suicide of the nations. 
The mere proposal for such a peace, based as 
it is upon abysmal lies and the world's dis- 
honor, is a sign of the intellectual insincerity, 
the spiritual shabbiness, of the generation that 
is now so violently passing away. 

Besides, such a peace would he, in every es- 
sential effect, an overwhelming victory for 
Germany, Make no mistake about the fact 
that, as the European situation now stands, 
Germany has won the war; and the peace that 
the pacifists propose, apparently granting 



AND THE world's PEACE 121 

victory to neither side, would leave her in pos- 
session of territories and spoils unequaled, in 
some respects, by the greatest of ancient em- 
pires. Germany has achieved an extraordi- 
nary triumph that she herself probably did not 
anticipate at the beginning of the war: she has 
conquered her own allies, and is practically in 
possession of their lands. The Austrian and 
Turkish Empires, as well as Bulgaria, are sub- 
stantially annexed to Germany, to say nothing 
of Roumania, Servia and Montenegro. A 
compact and continuous German Empire 
stretches from Antwerp and Hamburg to Bag- 
dad, Not even Rome had an empire so con- 
crete and well-rounded, so potential with 
world-dominion. With Germany's unexam- 
pled material and technical efficiency, with the 
Pan-German religion as the soul of this ef- 
ficiency, the Kaiser's Empire constitutes the 
very heart of both Europe and Asia, and, if 
perpetuated, will in a very few years have both 
continents completely under control, Ger- 
many can well afford a great display of gen- 



122 WOODROW WILSON 

erous renunciation. She can evacuate Bel- 
gium, return Alsace-Lorraine to France and 
give the Trentino and Gorizia to Italy, and 
still have made the greatest conquest that has 
been made since Rome's greatest days. The 
program of the pacifists and the financiers, if 
it be adopted, according so marvellously as it 
does with Germany's designs, will be the great- 
est historic imposture that has been perpe- 
trated since Constantine blazoned the name of 
Christ upon his polluted and polluting ban- 
ners. It is a peace that leaves the apparently 
non-victorious German as the shrewdest and 
completest conqueror of recorded history. 



VIII 

THUS if we would save the soul of the 
world from its dreadest danger, from per- 
haps its saddest delay, there must be no com- 
promise with the German, no halting by the 
way nor turning back in the purpose of the 
Allies. We must not forbear to cry that 
peace with an undefeated and umrepentant 
Germany is black with the world's disgrace; 
that it is a peace pregnant with the doom of 
freedom's faith. No matter upon whose hps 
it comes, nor what immediate nobility of pur- 
pose inspires it, it is a peace whose propelhng 
power is of Prussian generation. It can have 
no place in the councils of justice, no reception 
on the part of the compassion that is prophetic 
and comprehensive. The nations cannot sit 
together at a table of peace on any such terms, 
for it would indeed be no table of peace: rather 

123 



124 WOODROW WILSON 

would it be the table of a eonvenant by which 
humanity would turn traitor to itself. There 
can be no treaty of peace — ^unless indeed hu- 
manity thus betray itself — short of the com- 
plete destruction of that Prussian militarism 
which, for now these many years, has blocked 
all the wheels of the progress that makes for 
democracy and fraternity among the nations. 
Nor is that enough. The Allies must have 
the spiritual strength to say that they intend 
to destroy — not the German people — but the 
Prussian state and system. There can be no 
true civil order, no sane progress, no faithful in- 
ternational comity or community, until Prussia 
is dismembered and rendered impotent. As 
the Romans of old resolved, for material and 
Roman reasons, that Carthage must be de- 
stroyed, so must England and Italy and 
France resolve, for reasons of humanity and, 
the soul, and in order that a decent and fra- 
ternal civilization may come into being, that 
the Prussian Kingdom shall come to an end, 
and no more lay its malific influence upon the 



AND THE world's PEACE 125 

family of nations. And if the Allies of West- 
ern Europe have not faith to affirm this; if 
they have not the courage to persist until this 
he accomplished; if they do not prefer even a 
noble national extinction to any peace short of 
this, then they themselves are recreant to the 
pitiful divine judgment now relentlessly en- 
wrapping them, consuming the old and di- 
vided world and making way for a world that 
shall be united and new. 



IX 

THE soul of the world is sick of war — ^this 
I know — sick of the encircling and in- 
creasing slaughter, seemingly so ineffectual of 
decision or finality. Our present thoughts 
are all upon its early end — upon when, rather 
than what, the peace shall be. We have 
neither time nor patience, it seems, for the 
search for principles, for vision or prophecy 
or profound comprehension. We want im- 
mediate ways and means; we ask for speedy 
and facile formulse, for instant and practical 
solutions, no matter how transient they are, 
no matter how shallow or sordid. 

But we shall not get the things we want : we 
shall have to want and to welcome things im- 
measurably better. We cannot make peace 
because we are tired. We cannot build a 
wiser world-order on the basis of disgust and 

126 



AND THE world's PEACE 127 

weariness with the irrational and deathful dis- 
order that now is. We have come upon a time 
when perhaps the world may perish, and the 
story of man prove a cosmic fiasco, if we do not 
achieve some collective decision regarding our 
life's common course and meaning. It is to 
just such decision this incredible war is driving 
us. It is summoning us to a veritable seat of 
judgment; and there the appealing past fore- 
gathers, and the insurgent and overflowing fu- 
ture, and the interpenetrative spheres — ^be- 
likely more aware than we of the hour. 



X 

NOR Cometh peace nearer — it is rather re- 
tarded — by the mere proclamation of 
the pacifist ideal, no matter how lofty it be. 
For an ideal must not only transcend existing 
reality; it must go down underneath the con- 
ditions it would change, becoming their new 
substructure. It must embrace and account 
for the whole, nor evade a single hard ques- 
tion, a single ugly fact. It must, if it stands 
any righteous chance of realization, throw the 
entire problem with which it is concerned into 
solution. 

Your ideal may reach as high as it places, 
but it must be rooted deep and firm in the 
blood and the dust of the human struggle. 
Your prophet may peer as far into the human 
future as he can, but his hands must grasp the 
present — ^yea, and the past also: for the past, 

128 



AND THE world's PEACE 129 

too, is changed whenever we change the pres- 
ent, the things that were as well as the things 
that are being appointed anew by each regen- 
erative process. 

The pacifist fails — he fails morally and intel- 
lectually — because of his dissociation with real- 
ity. He has let himself be seduced by an ideal 
that stands essentially unrelated to the terrible 
and transmutative facts of the hour. The 
fault is not in his ideal, but in its detachment 
from both the desires and the deeds that divide 
into contending groups the nations to whom it 
is addressed. 

The peace for which pacifists now clamor 
uprears itself on a basis of ignorance and in- 
justice. By their studied determination to 
consider not the causes of the war, by their re- 
fusal to face the methods by which the war has 
been carried on by the Central Powers, the most 
of the programs for peace destroy their own 
validity. 

Besides, peace is not abstinence from war, is 
not mere non-resistance of evil ; and with the in- 



130 WOODROW WILSON 

f antile fancy that it is, and with all pacifist im- 
moralities as well, let us at once and forever 
have done. If we would have peace we must 
earn it, we must win it ; nor else than by battle 
may peace be ours. The peace that is living, 
the peace that is upbuilding, is the achievement 
of spiritual valor, of embattled love, and waits 
at the heart of life's conquered elements. 



XI 

NOT flesh and blood only now contend; our 
real weapons are other than those of mor- 
tal fashioning; nor is it merely a war between 
nations that engages us. It is a war fought 
with weapons of the spirit; it is a war between 
principles rather than nations — between the so- 
cial principle proclaimed at Jerusalem, two 
thousand years gone, and the doctrine of power 
announced and exercised by Germany. Shall 
it be the religion of democracy — ^which, if it be 
real, is none other than the acceptance and 
practice of the Christ? Or shall it be the re- 
ligion of Germanism — ^the modernization and 
enthronement of Wotan and Thor? The issue 
of the war will be the world's answer. 

Be it early or late, we shall give due divine 
account of ourselves, I am sure. Through 
these mazes of murder and madness, humanity 
will yet make its way. Deeply and vastly, 

131 



132 WOODROW WILSON 

more consciously and conclusively than before, 
more thoughtfully and threateningly, are the 
forces of freedom astir. They will be up and 
afoot ere long; and they will be winged and 
wise and unhalting too, brooking nor let nor 
hindrance from rulers, from bankers, from par- 
liaments. And these forces of freedom's re- 
nascent faith, fleet and effectual, will not only 
turn back the Germanism which is their pres- 
ent great enemy: they will then destroy, utterly 
and forever, that materialist faith which so 
long has been the seducer and false builder of 
civilization, and which has furnished the Ger- 
man Empire its reason for being. 



V 
PRO-AMERICA 

First published in La Setnaine Litteraire, Geneva, May 

5j 1917, upon the occasion of President Wilson s 

address in declaration of war, April 2, 



i 



PRO-AMERICA 



IT is a curious but divine irony that most of 
the great pacifists of history — ^the men who 
loathed war and sought to end it — have been 
placed in positions that morally compelled them 
to fight. They have had to enter the wars of 
their times in order to consecrate and conclude 
them, making them the violent openers of free- 
dom's doors, the procurers of a closer approach 
to mutualized man and his wedded world. 
Such is the destiny decreed to the last and 
the greatest of political pacifists — President 
Woodrow Wilson. 

And by his action, a new kind of war has 
appeared in the world — a war for which there 
is no adequate antecedent. We should have 
to go back to the Crusades for even a partial 

135 



136 WOODROW WILSON 

analogy. Although the campaigns of the 
Crusaders finally degenerated into expeditions 
for feudal plunder and dominion, at their in- 
ception they were inspired, just as America is 
now inspired, by a lofty and extra-national mo- 
tive. Yet even so, their attention was fixed 
upon the past rather than the future: they 
naively thought the Christian religion was to 
be saved by the recovery of its local birth- 
places. But the war which America is about 
to wage will have the future and not the past in 
view; and it will be universal in its scope and 
motivity. 

America is but incidentally at war with Ger- 
many. It is upon a new and vaster Crusade, 
rather than against Germany, that President 
Wilson is leading his people. "The world 
must be safe for democracy," he declares. 
"The menace to peace and freedom lies in the 
existence of autocratic governments backed 
by organized force which is controlled wholly 
by their will and not by the will of their peo- 
ple"; and "a steadfast concert for peace can 



AND THE world's PEACE 13T 

never be maintained except by the partnership 
of democratic nations." 

Thus America will be fighting for a free and 
federate world. The inspiration of her armies 
and efforts will be the release of the nations, 
once and forever, from the autocratic princi- 
ple, from ruling-class institutions, from every 
feudal form and remnant. Her aim will be to 
set the invocations and opportunities of free- 
dom before them — to compel and rejoice them 
with a human prospect that is wholly demo- 
cratic and mutualistic. It is for this that Pres- 
ident Wilson has labored so patiently, so pru- 
dently, so prophetically, and amidst such en- 
thralling difficulties and pervading complex- 
ities. 

Not yet may we appreciate the marvel of his 
achievement : we are too near the culmination, 
too eager to reap its first results. But ere long 
we shall perceive that there is not in all his- 
tory a case of a nation being so adroitly and 
sublimely led out of one state of mind into an- 
other, and led with such psychological percep- 



138 WOODROW WILSON 

tion and mastery. If the nation, like the in- 
dividual, has a subconscious mind, apparently 
it was this man alone who entered into it, so 
far as America is concerned — nor entered only, 
but brought its deep-hid desires to the thresh- 
old of practical politics, and translated them 
into conscious democratic purpose. 

In order to measure the magnitude of this 
conversion, we must remember that the great 
Middle West of America seemed so per- 
manently pro-German, a few months ago, that 
the German government counted upon Amer- 
ica as an eventual ally. Many influences were 
working to this end. The first was the Ger- 
man-American Alliance, which had its baptism 
and initiation at the hands of the Kaiser's 
brother. Prince Henry, who went to America 
for this purpose fifteen years ago. He was re- 
ceived with a popular enthusiasm so inordinate 
that it became repulsive to self-respecting men 
and women. He was feasted and honored by 
President Roosevelt, who was then at the 
height of his prestige and power. The result 



AND THE WORLD^S PEACE 139 

was an immense popularization of everything 
German in America, and all things English 
were discredited. 

Then there were large academic influences 
at work for Germany's dominance in science 
and scholarship; for the university culture in 
America was essentially German in its tend- 
encies and sympathies. This has been well 
stated by the editor of a great national journal, 
Collier's Weekly. "Before the war," he said, 
"there was excessive admiration for the intel- 
lectual vigor and orderliness of the German 
search for the kind of knowledge that some 
day may civilize the world. Germany was the 
great post-graduate schoolhouse for America. 
Every young man who wanted a precise under- 
standing of his profession, or wanted to pre- 
tend to have it, went to Germany if he could 
afford to. The fact that he had attended lec- 
tures over there was a better recommendation 
for him than a diploma from an American 
technical school. In former years the ambi- 
tious American student traveled to London or 



140 WOODROW WILSON 

Edinburgh to round out the semblance of an 
education. In recent years it seemed neces- 
sary for him to go to BerUn or Vienna. It 
was so in ahnost every branch of scientific 
training. Germans were, for Americans, the 
authority on everything from measles to Chi- 
nese pottery." 

There was also a chain of powerful news- 
papers, owned by William Randolph Hearst, 
and reaching twenty million daily readers. 
For years, his numerous journals have advo- 
cated an alliance between the United States 
and Germany against England and Japan. 
The same idea has dominated influential poli- 
ticians — dominates them even now. Many 
congressmen are still as pro-German as ever. 
They have merely submitted to an aroused and 
ennobled people, persuaded to their present 
high plane of action by the superb moral per- 
sistence of their President. 

Nor is the world even now aware of the ex- 
traordinary duel that has gone on, for nearly 
three years, between the intrigues of the Ger- 



AND THE WORLD^S PEACE 141 

man government and the wit and wisdom of 
Mr. Wilson, standing resolute and solitary 
amidst issues and conspiracies of which he only 
knew. And although Germany has lost and 
humanity has won, it is through the miraculous 
tact, the international statesmanship, that held 
sway over this one man's onward and unchang- 
ing purpose. There is a passage in Plato's 
"Repubhc" which well applies to Mr. Wilson's 
patience during this momentous struggle. 
"The peevish temper," says Plato, "furnishes 
an infinite variety of materials for imitation; 
whereas the temper which is wise and calm is 
so constantly uniform and unchanging that it 
is not easily imitated: and when imitated it is 
not easily understood, especially by a general 
gathering of all sorts of persons." To "the 
peevish temper" of many of his countrymen, 
and especially to the attacks of Mr. Roosevelt, 
Mr. Wilson gave neither heed nor answer. 
He kept on his way until his hour had come: 
he could not have acted an hour sooner than 
he did. And now his patience has been re- 



142 WOODROW WILSON 

warded, his purpose fulfilled, in the war which 
America will wage for a free and mutual- 
membered family of nations. 

We may now rest assured that no peace will 
be made with the Hapsburgs or the Hohenzol- 
lerns. America will not sheathe her sword so 
long as a Kaiser sits upon a throne. She 
recognizes in England and Italy fellow-repub- 
lics even more democratic in many respects 
than herself, and whose kings are merely sym- 
bols of a national unity; but over the Central 
Empires she sees the rule of that Oriental and 
anachronistic absolutism which has so long per- 
verted mankind — so long prevented the true 
progress and self-expression of the people. 

But this purging of the world of its feudal 
and autocratic past, of its governing classes, is 
only the beginning. From now on, the war 
will take on new and wide spiritual aspects — 
will become more and more religious, more and 
more apocalyptic. To the American mind 
and motive, it will become a crusade for a 
democracy whose application shall at last com- 



AND THE WORLD^S PEACE 143 

prehend all the facts and forces of life — all 
moral and social and economic relations; a 
democracy, in fine, which shall be an approach 
to the early Christian idea of the kingdom of 
heaven. 

It is precisely this idea which President Wil- 
son has brought into the sphere of practical 
politics. He has based the rights and rela- 
tions of nations upon it, and the permanent 
peace of the world, as well as the freedom and 
fulfillment of individuality. It is the end to- 
ward which he means to shape the war, and 
which he means to make the motive and the 
goal of American participation in it. There 
are few that yet realize the significance of what 
he has done, and of what America will yet do ; 
but the divine appointment of this participa- 
tion will become manifest in a series of world- 
changes, in a world-union and an ultimate 
world-happiness, that are quite beyond the 
present understanding or beHef of either re- 
ligions or nations. 



II 

To Americans such as myself — who have 
been counted inconsistent in defending 
the delays of the President while pleading for 
the cause of the Allies — to us the present ac- 
tion of America brings a joy and an exaltation 
which cannot well be expressed; for now we 
are delivered from what was indeed a tragic 
dilemma. From its beginnings, we have be- 
lieved the war to be the supreme crisis of his- 
tory. We have perceived, or have thought we 
perceived that upon the war's results, upon the 
general decision as to its causes and conse- 
quences, would depend the fate of mankind 
for centuries to come. We have even thought 
the choice would be final, sealing once and for 
all the course and the issue of man's planetary 
career. And holding thus to the apocalyptic 
and definitive nature of these days, conceiv- 

144 



AND THE WORLD^S PEACE 145 

ing the true value of man's past history and ex- 
perience to be wrapped up in the victory of the 
Alhes, we have placed the achievement of that 
victory before all else that concerned us — be- 
fore native land, before labors in which our 
lives have been spent, before friends, before 
every personal plan or desire. 

As ardent Americans, we naturally wished 
our nation to share in the sacrifice and glory of 
the defence of humanity against the German 
destroyer. But we knew that America, as a 
whole, was either pro-German or pacifist, and 
that only an intellectual minority favored the 
cause of the Allies. President Wilson knew 
this, and Germany knew, but the Allies knew it 
not. We foresaw that if the German govern- 
ment could force America prematurely into 
the war, the step would be to Germany's ad- 
vantage. She could prevent the shipment of 
munitions and supplies to the Allies, and count 
upon the pro- German sympathy of the popu- 
lation, even to the extent of creating civil war. 
President Wilson was determined to postpone 



146 WOODROW WILSON 

his decision until the nation should begin to 
understand the German menace, and to discern 
that the Allies were the champions of democ- 
racy. Even three months ago, Germany 
would have been the gainer if America had 
then joined the AlHes. We seemed therefore 
— those of us who were Americans and under- 
stood the dangers of a too early intervention — 
to be guilty of advocating the cause of the Al- 
lies and yet of desiring the non-participation 
of America on their behalf. 

Nor did the sorrow and the perplexity of 
our position end there: we knew that Amer- 
ica was lost if she did not make war against the 
Central Empires — not otherwise, we have re- 
peatedly said, could she save or create her own 
national soul. Yet knowing even this, we had 
to protest against participation at the time 
Germany desired it — the time when she could 
still count upon not only a measure of Amer- 
ican sympathy, but upon the intervention of 
American politicians on her behalf. We had 



AND THE WORLD^S PEACE 147 

to plead for confidence in the President's judg- 
ment, and to show the danger besetting the 
AlHes through a premature American action. 



Ill 

BUT all that is changed, and the whole 
world is changed as a consequence. For 
our President, acting now with such creative 
comprehension, is able so to act because he 
awaited the precise psychological moment. 
He studied the dial of the world's destiny ; he 
watched the hands on the clock of God. 
With a patience as wise as it is magnanimous, 
with a spiritual shrewdness that reveals his kin- 
ship with Moses and Cavour and Lincoln, with 
a prescience that appears nearly supernatural, 
he held broocjingly and bravely to his appointed 
times. Amidst the murmurs of the unknow- 
ing Allies, amidst the complaining voices of 
their anxious and unilluminated American 
friends, amidst the howls of mob-minded lead- 
ers as well, he let the inadequate occasions go 
by, yielding not to their clamors or seductions; 

148 



AND THE world's PEACE 149 

for he knew they were fraught with the fail- 
ure of his final purpose. 

But the stupendous hour came at last, and 
the man filled the measure of the hour; and 
now it is not only America, but an eager fel- 
lowship of expectant nations — of nations en- 
visioned and empowered with a new and won- 
drous world-purpose — that follows this first of 
world-statesmen into who knows what fields of 
war ere the days of battles be done. For now 
it is indeed a war between light and darkness — 
a war between a white and a black governing 
principle, each striving for possession of the 
world. 

Shall authority become the candid and 
chosen servant of the peoples, based upon their 
free and federate will, proceeding from their 
mutual mind, their social spirit, their common 
affection? Or shall authority be imposed 
upon the peoples from without, proceeding 
from the will of a possessing and governing 
class, and administered by the sheer might of 
a state that is an end in itself? It is to decide 



150 WOODROW WILSON 

as to which of these two principles shall prevail 
— as to which shall possess and shape the world 
— that the war from now on will be waged. 

I know that, as against the interpretation I 
have presented, the pacifist critics proclaim the 
action of America to be the triumph of a schem- 
ing and monied militarist propaganda: but 
precisely the opposite is profoundly the truth. 
America has become practically and exultantly 
anti-militarist. She has mobilized her will and 
her faith, her sons and her cities and her prai- 
ries, her natural and industrial and inventive 
resources, for the purpose of bringing militar- 
ism to its full and final end. She has taken up 
arms in order to destroy the need of arms. 
She has made herself the militant exponent of 
the millennial peace of the Apocalypse. 

And there is no contradiction between 
America's traditional opposition to militarism 
and her radiant resolution to fight. Her de- 
termination to clean up the world, to make it 
the dwelling-place of only democratic peoples 
and societies, is the perfect sequence of her 



AND THE WORLD^S PEACE 151 

historic hostility to standing armies and to war 
as a method of progress. And, furthermore, 
she has probably though unconsciously sounded 
the doom of the destructive economic system, 
the profiteering mode of production and distri- 
bution, upon which the prevalence of war de- 
pends, and which depends upon war for its 
own perpetuity. 

This new faith of America, unforeseen nor 
fully furnished yet, will finally and fully pre- 
vail. The end is not in doubt — even though 
the human race wade through woes yet un- 
known and immeasurable. Already, in the 
hour when America decided to fight for the 
freedom of humanity and the peace of the 
world — in that instant, the old heaven and the 
old earth began gathering themselves together 
for departure; and it is beneath a new and 
more intimate heaven, it is amidst the sudden 
vast resources of a collective spiritual precipi- 
tation, and into the tremendous morning of an 
earth newly -born and transfigured, that Wood- 
row Wilson leads now the enleagued and de- 
termined democratic peoples. 



APPENDIX 
AN APOLOGIA 

Published partly in La Tribune de Geneve, July l, iQlft 

and partly in a previous number of 

II Giornale d'ltaliaj Rome. 



AN APOLOGIA 



FOR some months now, I have been vari- 
ously criticised, even verbally executed, 
by the far from peaceful group of pacifists that 
gathers about M. Romain Rolland, and that, 
with or without his consent, enjoys the advan- 
tage of his pre-eminent prestige. And this at- 
tack upon my written words and their seeming 
inconsistencies is so extended as to include the 
whole American nation, and especially Presi- 
dent Wilson. I naturally count myself miser- 
ably unworthy of the honor these critics thus 
bestow upon me; for I am indeed one of the 
least representative of Americans, and our 
great President could scarcely claim a more 
negligible supporter. Despite my irrelevance, 
however, I feel that the critics have at last laid 

155 



156 WOODROW WILSON 

upon me a measure of defensive responsi- 
bility. 

Particularly am I called to account for hav- 
ing supported, nearly two years ago, an Amer- 
ican anti-militarist propaganda, while at the 
same time supporting the cause of the Allies: 
the critics most triumphantly contrast certain 
words I then wrote with words that are more 
recent. 

But I have not changed my mind about what 
I then said : I am not less but more anti-mili- 
tarist than I was before Germany essentially 
challenged the Christ of the Apocalypse, and 
the ongoing issues of the French Revolution, 
to a mortal and mayhap final combat. And 
this nowise contradicts my position as a pro- 
Ally and as profoundly an enthusiast regard- 
ing America's participation in the war. I was 
then writing against a pernicious propaganda 
to make America a military nation — shaping 
herself upon the European pattern instead of 
creating for and of herself a pattern wholly 
new. The propaganda had begun long before 



AND THE WORLD^S PEACE 157 

the world-war, and had no logical relation 
thereto ; there was then no prospect that Amer- 
ica would join the Allies in the defence of the 
human against the German. There was the 
possibility, however, of America's entrance 
upon a career of imperialistic expansion. 
Such was the clamorous program of certain 
politicians, supported by powerful capitalist 
over-lords, seeking an ultimate subjection of 
the world's markets to their international 
banks. Mexico and China were the first ob- 
jectives of this program, carrying with it, also, 
the early domination of North and South 
America. It was to this I was opposed : I did 
not wish to see our country become a second 
Rome, according to the prophecy of Guglielmo 
Ferrero and the much earlier De Tocqueville. 

Nor was it my humble opposition which was 
to be reckoned with; that would have been a 
small and futile matter. President Wilson — 
who is today the world's greatest pacifist — was 
steadfastly opposed to this militarist program 
from the first, as he is steadfastly opposed to it 



158 WOODROW WILSON 

now. Eminent educators of America were 
and still are opposed to it — even while fer- 
vently supporting the participation of Amer- 
ica in the war between Germanism and the 
spiritual being of humanity. 



I 



II 

NOR has there been any conversion in my 
position as regards the particular war in 
which the world is now engaged. From its be- 
ginning till now, I have been both pro- Ally 
and pacifist. It is precisely because I am a 
pacifist that I am profoundly pro- Ally, He is 
the true pacifist, I believe, who now identifies 
himself with the men and the nations that lay 
the axe at the Prussian root of the world's pres- 
ent overwhelming military evil. And this I 
have believed and avowed from the first — from 
this position I have never deviated. I did 
not become pro-Ally on coming to French 
Switzerland, as the critics declare. 

Eight years ago, I wrote a long paper, pub- 
lished in England and America, and after- 
ward translated into French and German, 
urging the German peril upon the attention of 

159 



160 WOODEOW WILSON 

international socialists. 1 declared, then, that 
Pf'ussian Germany did not belong to the cate- 
gory of civilized nations, but stood for a mili- 
tarist and military barbarism which would over- 
whelm Europe, and afterwards America, if the 
nations did not unite to compel Germany's dis- 
armament. Surely, — and alas! — ^has Ger- 
many fulfilled my prophecy. 

And but fourteen months before the war, 
I again wrote at length and vehemently upon 
the subject, pointing out the catastrophe that 
was near unless a prepared civilization should 
prevent German action. I outlined the Ber- 
lin-to-Bagdad program as the pivot of the war 
I saw surely approaching. This appeal was 
widely published in England and America, 
read by many thousands of people, and dis- 
missed as fantastic. In fourteen months, and 
almost according to my presumptuous sched- 
ule, the catastrophe came. 

Then immediately, and variously and at 
length, I wrote in condemnation of the action 
of German Social-Democrats: at the same 



AND THE world's PEACE 161 

time, I called upon all other Socialists to rally- 
to the support of the AUies, in view of the fact 
that they were fighting, consciously or uncon- 
sciously, for that world-democracy which af- 
fords the only sphere wherein social recon- 
struction can take place. 

I am on record, messieurs les pacifists, for 
the past ten years, in my opposition to Ger- 
manism — to Germanism as a world-politic, to 
Germanism as a religion. I have spoken and 
written so much upon the issue between Ger- 
manism and humanity, — ^between Germanism 
and democracy, — between Germanism and 
essential socialism, — between Germanism and 
the real religion of Christ, — that I have thereby 
become, so far as I am read at all, a nuisance 
among the nations. 



Ill 

As to my country, there is no contradiction 
or inconsistency in the.present American 
procedure; rather is our national action 
threaded with the highest consistency and 
unity. 

It is true, as the Sociahst pacifists contend, 
and as I have just now admitted, that power- 
ful capitalists did plan, in the past, the con- 
version of America into a military nation ; but 
the capitalists have not accomplished their 
purpose by the present action of America. 
On the contrary, America has taken the course 
that involves — doubt it not — the ultimate 
doom of the system by which the capitalist be- 
comes. It is for this reason some of the most 
powerful financiers did their utmost to bring 
about a premature peace, and to prevent 
American co-operation with the Allies. For 

162 



AND THE world's PEACE 163 

this reason, also, some of them even now 
secretly support the pseudo-pacifism that is 
everywhere working for Germany — working to 
compose a peace that shall leave her relatively 
as powerful as she was before the war. 



IV 

T3UT the chief point of pacifist criticism is 
'*-^ the seeming change that came over our 
President. I have akeady answered their 
criticism in different journals and upon divers 
occasions. But, at the cost of repetition, I 
feel I must explain the American situation 
more fully — or rather enlarge upon the ex- 
planation I have already given. 

The change has not been in Mr. Wilson, but 
in the nation of which he is the chief servant. 
If American feeling, up till the beginning of 
the present year, had been weighed or meas- 
ured, it would have been found to bulk largely 
on the side of Germany. It is true that there 
is an intellectual minority, chiefly along the 
Atlantic fringe, which, from the beginning of 
the war, has both intelligently and ardently 
supported the cause of the Allies, and from 

164 



AND THE world's PEACE 165 

which some of the best expositions of the issue 
between Germany and civiHzation have come. 
But this New York and N'ew England mi- 
nority neither represents nor knows actual 
America: it has always been ignorant of the 
nation as a whole, influencing the national 
mind but little at any time, and now scarcely 
at all. The real America is embodied, both 
geographically and temperamentally, by those 
states which lie between the Alleghany and the 
Rocky Mountains, and which we loosely call 
the Middle West. And this great Middle 
West, increasingly unmindful or disdainful of 
the Atlantic fringe, was not deeply concerned 
with the embattled hopes and despairs of Eu- 
rope. So far as it had sympathies, they were 
largely pro-German — although, as I have said, 
the Middle West American had little or no 
knowledge of what the war was about, nor did 
he trouble himself to learn. In so far as he 
gave it his attention, the war seemed to him 
without sense or meaning, and none of his af- 
fair. He regarded it as an Old World de- 



166 WOODEOW WILSON 

lirium, a needless universal annoyance, inter- 
fering with earth's comfortable ongoing. No 
less, his pro- German sympathies were there, 
even though of an origin that was either cal- 
culative or careless. 

The former pro-Germanism of the Middle 
West American is easy to understand. He 
has had Germany for a neighbor all his life. 
The adjoining village door-yard, or the next 
farmyard, enclose the home of a German- 
American. Or he may have been born in 
Germany himself; or if not himself, his par- 
ents are German-born. If he is of substance 
and ambition sufficient to send his sons and 
daughters to college, they pass under the 
teaching of professors the most of whom have 
studied in German universities ; for a German 
diploma has been practically the pre-requisite 
of a professorship in an American college or 
unversity. 

There are indeed large sections of the Mid- 
dle West, large towns and agricultural com- 



AND THE WORLD S PEACE 167 

munities, in which German is the prevailing 
language, and where little or no English is 
heard; and also where, as a consequence, the 
German mentality has been subtly displacing 
the mentality of the early Anglo-Saxon and 
still earlier French settlers. And aside from 
ancestry and language, there is the economic 
condition and social influence of the average 
German-American. He is usually frugal, 
substantial, often jovial, sometimes religious. 
He has the habits of what we are fondly and 
fatuously accustomed to regard as "a good 
citizen." It is true, if the original American 
had been discerning, he would have noted that 
his German-American neighbor tacitly as- 
sumed some sort of superiority, and that he re- 
mained a member of some German tribe. A 
closer analysis would have revealed, too, that 
America was not assimilating the German 
citizenry so much as the German citizenry was 
assimilating America. But the average Ameri- 
can is not discerning, and is only annoyed 



168 WOODROW WILSON 

when he is asked to make intellectual discrimi- 
nations; and in this he does not differ from 
the average citizen of another country. 

With England and France, on the contrary, 
the Middle West American has not been inti- 
mate. He does not know that the enforce- 
ment of the Monroe Doctrine, — that the pro- 
tection of his country's political interests in 
South America, — has depended chiefly upon 
the British navy and the somewhat generous 
consent of the British government. He does 
not much remember Lafayette — it is the At- 
lantic fringe which does that. His knowledge 
of English history, so far as it relates to Amer- 
ica, is confined to the highly-colored tyranny, 
exercised by Lord North and George IV, 
which hampered the West India trade of the 
Puritan merchants and brought on the Ameri- 
can Revolution. And all his conceptions of 
France are derived from school-book or Sun- 
day School tales of the Reign of Terror, and 
from the usual traditions of French frivolity 
and atheism — tales that have been accen- 



i AND THE WOELD's PEACE 169 

tuated, these recent years, by the growth of the 
poHtical power of the CathoHc Church along- 
side that of the German citizenry. He has 
heard of France and England from afar, and 
with poisoned or provincial ears, while he has 
had the industrious and assertive Germany in 
his daily midst. 

It is only when we keep this whole Ameri- 
can situation in mind, and remember that prob- 
ably President Wilson knew it as no other man 
knew it, that we can understand the difficulties 
with which he has had to deal, and the adroit 
and dramatic patience he has had to exercise. 
Neither his verbal nor his factual movements 
are academic or theoretic, mysterious or in- 
decisive, or inconsistent with one another in 
their progress, to one who knows the mentality 
of the American people and the perilous com- 
plexity of the American national problem. 
On the contrary, the course of our President 
has been one of extraordinary consistency and 
perception. It has been with a leadership un- 
equaled in history, with a wisdom and continu- 



170 WOODROW WILSON 

ity that seem almost omniscient, that Wood- 
row Wilson has guided the nation into an un- 
derstanding of the meaning of the war, and 
into an acceptance of world-responsibility. 



' 



V 

THUS America traveled the road to Da- 
mascus and saw a great light. She en- 
ters now upon the war with a purpose and in 
a spirit that perhaps never hitherto inspii^ed a 
warring nation. To her it is indeed a holy 
war. From the Atlantic to the Pacific, the 
nation is possessed by the purpose to "make 
the world safe for democracy" — to create, in 
fact, a world-state embracing all nations. 

There is but one thing that can possibly ren- 
der vain America's masterful and majestic con- 
secration — and that is, the procurement of a 
premature peace by the pacifist emissaries of 
Germany. It is these, as President Wilson 
himself now perceives, who are America's and 
democracy's worst enemy. And it is these 
we must fight without surcease — against these 

we must lift all the weapons which freedom's 

171 



172 WOODROW WILSON 

former revolutions have placed in our hands — 
lest the dream of the fraternal world-state, 
lest America's crusade for the fulfillment of 
that dream, die away in treason and compro- 
mise, and thus the whole present sacrifice of 
humanity prove vain. 

Yet even as I sound this warning, I am 
moved to say that such futihty of faith, such 
baffling of sacrifice, cannot be. For we are 
not alone — we are not alone in the struggle 
and the hope for which America has drawn the 
consecrated sword. Cooperate with us, un- 
witnessed except by the few seeing eyes, are 
they who are stronger than the schemes and 
the swords that are against us. Invisibly but 
appreciably proceeding m our midst, white- 
horsed and well-weaponed there, dead to 
egoism from the world's foundation and there- 
fore predestined to victory, are the hosts and 
the Leadership no planetary powers or crea- 
tures can withstand. They hold in their 
hearts the meaning of these days, and upon 



AND THE world's PEACE 173 

them are the war's last issues, the earth's in- 
effable ends. 

And because the world is theirs, it is also 
ours; hence our hearts need not be troubled, 
neither need they be afraid. The divine man- 
hood whereof our history has so far been the 
continual crucifier, — ^this manhood will sur- 
vive, will arise and grow in stature and prevail. 
The peace that proceedeth from a worlded 
good- will, the justice that inhereth in mutual 
love only, the freedom that is naught other 
than obedience to that love, — these are ap- 
proaching, are inevitable. The kingdom of 
heaven is at hand. 



H 94 89 











* ,>^ "^^ •.'^ 






















°* •••• A? 'V. 



-,5°- 





'•^^ 



4 c 



>. %.** •: 









.^^•^^ 



:, %,.^ .-' 









,«»• 






?-/\^l^^/\/^ 

•i^ 



9 Deaddified using the Bookkeeper prui -t 

i * **© Neutralizing agent: Magnesitim Oxide 
^p* Treatment Date: j^j^ '> 



% ^.'^llf/ ^r c> 'iW^^.* ^^ PreservationTechnolog 3 

'^^ *' <^ ^-. «> ••* aP 4 world leader im paper PBESERVATI 

^^ \^' • l^w'* CV *0 ♦ * ^" Thomson Park Drive 

U% <^ ^ **i^MP^* "^ 44^^ ♦'/v^ Cranberry Township. PA 16066 



s* .•"•. ^o. 



^°'%. V 






40^ • 







• DO 



V , 



r .!•«. 



















v^\.-;^>c:- 












'.* .♦ 



'^^« 

v^ 






i^"^ *' 









i^ *'••-» 



^\:i^>^: y\-.'A'. 



5^^ 










^^.^^ o* 



v< 



\/>S 






